Small city crew upholds big operations

As summer fades fast into fall and the city's faltering water main system becomes locked into a subterranean frozen vault, the city maintenance department's work will hardly decrease.

The tiny, seven-man crew responds not only to the leaky pipes but also just about everything else involved in the city's operation.

Like snow plowing, cemetery upkeep, park maintenance and its aging vehicle fleet.

Corky Pape supervises the department, which at times acts like surgeon and medicine for the water main system — cutting open streets to repair punctured pipes and ridding mineral buildup from clogged pipes via pressure testing and hydrant flushes.

Pape documented some of this summer's work with photos showing the extent of the deterioration.

In them, crews gather around car-sized craters of unearthed streets to get at finger-sized holes in water pipes.

Water escapes even through tiny holes and leaks slowly through insecure valves. In Pape's photos, however, workers have placed objects inside the holes for perspective on the damage. A finger fits inside one, a screwdriver hangs out of another.

Yellowish gunk clings to the sides of some pipes, which explains the spotty, weak water pressure in some homes around town.

"Here's one I shot looking down a pipe. And this one isn't real bad. I've seen half an inch taken from a 2-inch pipe," Pape said.

He said the majority of pipes around town are worse. Much worse.

"Before we had the water treatment plant, this stuff was building up in the pipes severely."

And the buildup may remain for a long time.

At the crew's summertime pace of a couple blocks per year, Pape said the entire system couldn't be complete for another 100 years.

The work isn't just neverending, it can also be dangerous.

There's the heavy equipment and the shifting, unstable earth. But there's also asbestos.

And sometimes lots of it.

Pape recalled the dig last summer on City Service Road near the river when the crew tapped a massive vermiculite source. Environmental officials and media were soon on the scene. The crew continued the work in cumbersome white hazardous material attire.

And then there's the pipe material. The new stuff is plastic. The old stuff is either steel or AC Pipe — an asbestos and concrete mix.

"There is a problem when you're repairing and you're down there cutting that," he said.

Pape estimates that 25 percent of Libby's pipe system is made from the asbestos-concrete mix.

The extent and nature of the deterioration isn't the only factor slowing the process.

The other obstacle is maintaining the equipment that maintains the water infrastructure. The department's lot looks like an industrial artifact museum with a couple speckles of modernity.

A new, $140,000 Volvo backhoe loader is surrounded by a fleet that requires almost as much maintenance as the city's pipes.

Pape's newest pickup truck is a 1991 Ford. The newest dump truck? A 1989 white Kenworth.

We just don't have the equipment or the manpower," Pape said.

In his crew of seven, one guy — Duane Tholan — is temporary. If the city can't come up with his salary, Tholan could be gone at anytime.

"We're trying to find the money right now to keep him," Pape said.