It surely seems a non sequitur to compare repair of a broken sewer main to a choreographed ballet. But listening to Betty Anne Rogers, director of the Warwick Sewer Authority, the music was the only thing missing from the discovery of a sink hole on West Shore Road mid-morning Wednesday to fully restoring sewer service in the early morning hours Thursday.

“They did a fabulous job. Like a fine oiled machine,” she said Thursday afternoon.

A sink hole about two feet wide and two feet deep was the prelude to the symphony to follow. Police diverted traffic to the middle lane of West Shore Road not far from the Islander Restaurant as city crews sought to determine the possible cause to the hole that kept growing.

“We have a forced main (a 12-inch pipe carrying waste water from the Oakland Beach pumping station to a gravity line in Sandy Lane more than a mile and a half away) in the area,” Rogers said. That was all the department needed to know.

 D’Ambra Construction, which is on call for emergencies, had a crew working on the Bayside sewer project just down the road. They immediately dispatched a backhoe and a team to supplement the sewer authority crew that was starting to assemble. The pipe and the break about eight to ten feet below the surface were quickly identified.

But repairing the break, not to mention preventing waste water from filling the hole sink hole and spilling out onto the street and into the drainage system and eventually into the Bay was not going to be easy. Shutting down the pumping station was ruled out. To have done so at a time when people were just starting their day with showers, washing and other chores could have backed up waste water into scores of homes. The department’s Vactor truck, capable of sucking up and holding thousands of gallons of wastewater cleaned out at the wet well (an overflow reservoir) at the pump station and then the water in the sink hole exAposing the ruptured pipe. The authority alerted the Department of Environmental Management that kept an eye on the situation.

While the flow of any wastewater into the bay was averted, now the authority was faced with making repairs without shutting down the Oakland Beach system that could back up sewers into homes and businesses. The Vactor truck made it possible. It was used to transport wastewater from the pit and the Oakland Beach pump to the nearest gravity fed line where it then went to the treatment plant. 

Rogers, who remained on the scene until about 10 p.m. when it was apparent the ruptured portion of the pipe was cut free and a replacement section fitted in with connecting clamps, was in awe of the teamwork and timing. She said between the inventories of the sewer division and water department there was the equipment and materials to get the job done. City and D’Ambra crews worked in tandem.

It was less than ideal conditions. As the sun dropped so did the temperatures. “It was cold, I couldn’t feel my feet,” she recalled. When she left, Rogers told the crew to notify her as soon at the job was completed. She got the call about 1:30 a.m. Thursday.

Rogers said the cause of the break is under investigation. There had been work in the area and the compaction of fill could have contributed to the sink hole. A contributing factor, she points out, could have been the high water table resulting from the second wettest month of March on record.

Addressing an aging infrastructure

The Oakland Beach forced main is one of several aging lines the authority has scheduled for replacement or relining since the collapse of the Sandy Lane pipe on Thanksgiving eve 2018 that feeds into the Cedar Swamp pumping station. Replacement of the pipe causing weeks-long rerouting of traffic prompted an extensive examination of the sewer infrastructure and the identifying of multiple areas where the accumulation of hydrosulfide gas accelerated deterioration of the pipes. The authority adopted a program to reline the pipes, which is cheaper than replacing them. But even planning couldn’t avert the unexpected. On Sept. 13, 2022 the forced main from the Cedar Swamp pumping station to a gravity line off Airport Road ruptured on Lakeshore Drive, dumping thousands of gallons of waste water into Warwick Pond. The above ground black pipes that now follow Airport Road are part of the by-pass set up to enable the relining of the original pipe. That job is to be completed this summer.

In a Facebook post last Wednesday, Mayor Picozzi posted photos of the work on West Shore Road to let motorists know there could be delay, adding “our sewer infrastructure had been ignored for a long time but in the past three years they have made great strides in improving our aging systems using federal monies.”

Rogers said design for the relining of the Oakland Beach forced main has been completed and the authority is finalizing financing of the project using bonding, Congressional earmark grants and American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Reflecting on the events last week, Rogers concluded that the sink hole was “actually a godsend.”

Had it not been detected as quickly as it was, and had the resources not been in place as they were, the break could have been far more difficult to repair and adversely impacted the environment.