Denver cone zones: Sewer lines
| July 23, 2009 | 11:01 AM
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A slow migration of red cones along Speer Boulevard this summer marks the path of a major rehabilitation of two sewer lines by the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District.
“We started the work at Cherry Creek Drive and Monaco Street, and been working our way west through Cherry Creek to the Auraria campus,” said Marc Flatt, head of the district’s transmission system division.
The $8 million project began last year and is expected to be completed this October. Two parallel, aging pipelines — the Cherry Creek Common Interceptor and the Cherry Creek Interceptor — are being rehabilitated. The Cherry Creek Common Interceptor is about 40 to 50 years old, while the Cherry Creek Interceptor is 25 years old.
Although extensive rehab work was done on the Cherry Creek Common about 10 years ago, no repair work has been done on the Cherry Creek Interceptor since it was installed in the 1980s.
The Cherry Creek Intercepter has 54-inch-diameter pipes, while the Cherry Creek Common’s pipes range from 27 to 33 inches in diameter. Together, they carry about 30 million gallons of water a day to the treatment plant.
Four miles of the Cherry Creek Interceptor will be fixed, but only 3,200 feet of the Cherrry Creek Common line will be rehabilitated, through a process called cured-in-place. In this process, a pipe is dried out, and a liner is placed inside. The liner is then heated until it hardens or “cures” inside the pipe. The process allows the sewer lines to be repaired without having to dig up the pipe.
“We won’t need to be back on these two lines for five to 10 years,” project engineer Kelsey Gedge said.
cone zone, construction, denver, Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, sewer line, speer boulevard
