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The pipe under Pershing Avenue was laid sometime between 1911 and 1917.
Men worked by hand, perhaps with the help of a steam shovel, to dig the six-foot trench for one of York's first sanitary sewer lines. Then they lowered two-foot sections of terra cotta clay pipe, each 18 inches across with 11/2-inch thick walls, into the trench.
They measured the grade for each section, making sure to maintain the line's downward slope, and pushed the pipe into place.
The work was arduous and exhausting. Extending the line a few feet might take all day.
For 90 years, that pipe carried waste water from downtown
During that time, trains, cars and people moved overhead as the city grew and changed, sent its sons to fight in two world wars, rioted, recovered, lost its downtown and began to get it back.
The pipe worked, so no one noticed it.
On May 28, at 1:40 p.m., Wendell Yoder used the bucket on his hydraulic track hoe to peel the macadam off Pershing Avenue nine feet north of the Market Street intersection. He rolled it up like he was scooping ice cream.
Within 15 minutes, he had removed the soft-stone fill, dirt and debris that covered most of the pipe. In the few spots where it showed, the pipe resembled brown glazed pottery.
Without pause or ceremony, Yoder lowered the bucket again. Its rounded steel teeth smashed through the clay. He cupped the bucket and dropped the terra cotta pieces into a waiting dump truck.
For a moment, the air developed the bitter tinge of fouled water.
Within five minutes, a nine foot section of pipe -- likely two days' work back in the teens -- was gone.
A few paces away rested the 14-foot 8-inch piece of sea-foam green PVC pipe that would replace it.
When residents in most areas of York flush their toilets, the waste water flows out of the building and through connector pipes to lines that run under the center of the street.
Those lines, called laterals, then feed into a major line, called an interceptor, such as the line under Pershing, that conveys the waste to the treatment plant. The pipes get wider in diameter every time main lines connect. Just before the line reaches the treatment plant, the pipe reaches 60 inches across.
Like Roman aqueducts, the system relies on gravity to pull the waste along, so pipes are laid at a slight angle.
Most of the
The city has about 100 miles of sanitary sewer pipe. About 73 miles are terra cotta pipe.
When that terra cotta, also known as vitrified clay pipe, was made, it was fired so the clay particles fused to create an almost glass-like state. It is both rigid and strong, but, over time, pressure can cause it to fracture. Once that happens, it soon begins to fail.
About five years ago, during a routine check with a camera probe, city crews found cracks in the pipe on Pershing Avenue south of Market Street. As it cracked, the pipe flattened out, likely caused by pressure from train and motor traffic above. Waste water seeped out of the fractures.
The city replaced about 40 feet of the failing terra cotta with PVC pipe and made the work that took place this spring -- replacing the two blocks of interceptor under Pershing, from Mason Avenue to Philadelphia Street -- a priority. Even then, it took years of logistical work to break ground.
The Pershing project is part of the city's long-range plan to replace the clay pipes a few blocks at a time in an effort to stay ahead of the failure. It's cheaper and easier to replace a line on your time- table -- on a sunny afternoon in May -- than the pipe's timetable, which might be a snowy February night.
That's why a four-man crew from Wexcon Inc., a utilities contracting company, prepared to lower a 14-foot, 8-inch piece of 21-inch-wide PVC pipe into the ground beneath Pershing after clearing out the old pipe May 28.
It was early afternoon. Pedestrians passed on the street in shorts and shirt sleeves.
First, the crew covered the bottom of the trench with a few inches of soft-stone pebbles to bed the pipe. PVC is a flexible pipe, meaning it can flatten out if it is not properly bedded.
Yoder, the track hoe operator, used the bucket to lower the pipe into the trench on a rope, where Rick Eberly, the foreman, and laborer Kendall Beachy settled it. Eberly cleaned and greased the wider bell end of the existing PVC pipe and the spigot end of the new one. Then Eberly and Beachy fit the spigot into the bell, and Yoder used the bucket to nudge the two together.
Eberly checked the level and looked up at Beachy.
"It's perfect," he said.
The fourth man, Michael Gross, drove a backhoe to the edge of the trench. Beachy signaled to him, shaking his hand back and forth like a Pentecostal preacher, and Gross tipped the backhoe's plow blade, showering more soft pebbles on the pipe.
Earlier in the day, Jack Longstreet, the superintendent of sewer maintenance said, "If we do the job right, this will last longer than any of us are around."
The pipe is not the only thing buried beneath Pershing Avenue.
Electric lines, water lines, telecommunications lines, gas lines and storm sewer lines all cross under Pershing at some point, often stacked one on top of the other, with the oldest -- many times the sanitary sewer line -- on the bottom.
The crew from Wexcon encountered almost all these things as it moved through the Market Street intersection.
The water line created the central challenge.
The 12-inch pipe carries water at 250 pounds per square inch, or about six times the strength of what flows into the average home. Twice within the intersection, the water pipe turns at a 90-degree angle.
To keep the pressure from blowing out the pipe, those 90-degree turns are buttressed by thick blocks of concrete, called thrust blocks. In 1995, that 12-inch pipe exploded after one of those thrust blocks failed and released 200,000 gallons of water, destroying the intersection and buckling the train tracks.
It was, Longstreet said, a big, expensive mess.
The sanitary sewer line ran directly under the thrust block. In order for the Wexcon crew to replace the pipe, they would have to destroy the thrust block, then rebuild it. To do that, they would have to shut off the water running through the intersection.
That meant working overnight.
At 11 p.m. May 28, the crew waited for York Water Company to close the four valves that controlled the 12-inch line.
The men's breath frosted with each exhale. The mosquitoes that buzzed through the air while they were eating dinner had gone.
Sewage gurgled through the above-ground bypass tube the crew had set up to get waste water from Mason Avenue to Clarke Avenue.
At 11:21, they set to work.
Yoder climbed in his track hoe and raised the bucket to tear out manhole 23B, a four-foot tall, four-foot in diameter concrete cylinder, of which most motorists saw only its hubcap-sized cover. The manhole backed up against the water pipe's thrust block and had essentially become part of the buttress.
By subtly flicking the track hoe's gearshift-like controllers in his left and right hands, Yoder rocked the manhole off its mooring. The track hoe's bucket was like a child's tongue trying to work loose a stubborn baby tooth.
Yoder is the owner and president of Wexcon. He worked in the front office after starting the company, but got bored moving paper. So he demoted himself to owner, president and excavator.
"I like the challenge," he said earlier in the night. "I like to work around stuff and the overhead obstacles . . . It's fun for me."
Digging in the Market Street intersection required great concentration. With so many exposed utilities, the trench was lined with $10,000 mistakes.
Once Yoder had freed the manhole, he lifted it and balanced it on the bucket's teeth as he rotated the track hoe's arm around and over the dump truck. When Yoder released it, the manhole crashed into the bed, the one noise that caused everyone on site to turn their heads.
Then Yoder went to work on the thrust block.
For the more precise destruction, Gross, the backhoe operator, brought over the jackhammer mounted on its arm. Eberly, the foreman, pointed as Gross pecked away at the remaining concrete.
By midnight, the thrust block was crushed and Yoder had cleared away its rubble along with the sanitary sewer pipe beneath it.
The demolition done, the crew began rebuilding.
First, they lowered into the trench a square concrete box with holes cut into the four sides. The box would replace manhole 22, a brick storm sewer manhole the crew had ripped out earlier in the day.
The box design would allow the storm sewer pipe to be placed about a foot above the channel the crew would later build for the waste water flow.
Beachy cut away at the box with a circular saw, expanding the pre-formed holes, before pounding the fragments loose with a sledge hammer. Dust billowed from the trench like fog from a crypt in a B-movie.
They attached a new piece of PVC pipe to the section they laid that afternoon, entering the north side of the box. Beachy placed bricks under the pipe until it reached the proper grade, which Eberly checked with a laser level.
After they lowered a new concrete cylinder in to replace 23B, they placed a pipe connecting the box with the new manhole, and a six-foot length leading out the other side.
Then, just before 3 a.m., as Beachy built a base for the pipes with brick and mortar, they received word they needed to make a change.
The old terra cotta pipe was 18 inches wide.
The new PVC pipe is 21 inches wide. That allows the new pipe to be laid at a shallower angle, because the additional surface area reduces friction between the smooth plastic and the waste water.
But for the 21-inch pipe to fit under the water pipe, a six-foot length would have to flow uphill. Such a short piece would not doom a gravity system, but it could create a collection area for solid waste.
Standing next to the trench, Longstreet, the city's supervisor, saw the solution that had eluded him on diagrams: Use a piece of 18-inch PVC pipe for the section between manholes.
The three-inch difference between the two pipes meant the 18-inch pipe could be placed closer to the water pipe above it, which would allow the downhill sewage flow to continue.
At 3:22, Yoder lowered the freshly cut 18-inch pipe into the trench. After Eberly confirmed the grade, Beachy resumed his mortar work.
Twenty minutes later, a Kinsley cement truck arrived and poured cement to seal the pipe's connections, rebuild the water pipe thrust block and shape the floors for the two new manholes.
In both cases, the crew created channels out of the cement for the waste water to flow. They did that, instead of laying more pipe, so city workers could easily take waste-water samples during their monthly inspections.
Eberly worked with a trowel to fashion a channel in manhole 22, and Yoder did the same in 23B.
As they moved in the trench, the men balanced on the edge of the manholes and pipes, like steel workers on the skeleton of a high-rise but with a much shorter fall.
At 4:55, the sky to the east brightened as York Water Company workers turned the valves, setting water coursing through the 12-inch water pipe. Even as the cement hardened into concrete, the thrust blocks held.
There would be no big mess.
Eberly, Beachy and Gross sipped at Monster Energy Drinks while Yoder drank Rutter's French vanilla coffee. They had been working since 12:30 p.m. the day before, and it showed in their eyes.
By 5:35, just after the streetlights went off, they pushed in their last piece of PVC pipe for the night.
Within the hour, they had replaced the 15-inch storm sewer line that cut through manhole 22, the concrete box. Then, they placed pre-formed concrete caps on both manholes and back-filled with soft pebbles.
They unhooked the sewer bypass, and waste water rushed through the PVC pipe for the first time.
If the pipe worked as it should, no one would notice it for another 100 years.
jfrantz@ydr.com; 771-2062
THEN AND NOW
So how much have things changed since workers laid the sanitary sewer line under Pershing Avenue?
For starters, it was still called Water Street, not Pershing Avenue. That's because Gen. John J. Pershing had yet to become a national hero, because the country had yet to enter World War I.
Some facts about the time the pipe was being laid, sometime between 1911 and 1917:
--- The Capitol Theatre was built.
--- Most major county roads were toll roads.
--- York's box fire-alarm system was installed.
--- York's Chief of Police earned $80 per month, sergeants earned $65 per month, and patrolmen earned $60 per month.
--- In 1915, the county's livestock suffered a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
--- In 1917, the Spanish flu pandemic reached York, claiming 32 lives. York Hospital was so overcrowded, doctors sent patients to the York Fairgrounds. As a result, that year's York Fair was canceled.
Until the newly laid sanitary sewer was connected to the waste water treatment plant between 1916 and 1918, the city used a combined sewer: Waste water mixed with storm water and washed out into the Codorus Creek.
-- Source: Gazette and Daily archives; "Never To Be Forgotten," by James McClure; and Jack Longstreet, York's superintendent of sewer maintenance.
THE COST
The original contract price for the Pershing Street project was $268,958, according to Jack Longstreet, York's superintendent of sewer maintenance.
The actual cost will be higher once the final bill is tallied in about a month, Longstreet said.
The original contract price did not include moving a gas line, which needed to be done, or delays that were caused when workers discovered previously unmarked utilities, Longstreet said.
REPORTING THE STORY
This story was assembled from interviews with people who worked on the sanitary sewer lines, their supervisors, engineers' drawings, York departmental reports from 1908-1920, news reports from the York Gazette and Daily and the York Daily Record and the reporter's observations during the Pershing Avenue project.
Those interviewed included:
--- Jack Longstreet, York's superintendent of sewer maintenance
--- Wexcon, Inc. president Wendell Yoder, foreman Rick Eberly, operator Michael Gross and laborer Kendall Beachy
--- Lynn Ramsey, of Buchart Horn, Inc., the project's inspector
--- Jim Gross, York's Director of Public Works
--- JT Hand, of York Water Company
