What’s with the mystery pipe in the park?

More than a few Curious Readers have asked me what the heck is going on at Lakebottom Park, or Weracoba Park, if you prefer.

There are hundreds of feet of large black pipe stretching from the southern tip of the park at 13^th Street (and even beyond) all the way to the mid-point where 17^th Street bisects the park. The pipe runs alongside Weracoba Creek, except for the three places where foot-bridges cross it. There the pipe dips down into the creek bed and back out so people don’t have to step over it.

After the pipe snakes underneath 13^th Street, it comes out and appears to be fed down into a sewer clean-out manhole.

So I called the Columbus Water Works to see if they are behind this.

They are, said Vic Burchfield, Water Works vice president for information, security and environmental services.

It’s called a CIPP project, which stands for “Cured In Place Pipe.” It calls for asleeve of resin-coated material to be snaked through an aging or leaky sewer pipe, then inflated so it fills the old pipe completely. Then it’s filled with very hot water, which cures the liner till it’s rock hard, Burchfield explained.

“We open up the stretch of sewer pipe at each end and pull the sleeve through, then they inflate it and it cures hard as a rock,” Burchfield said.

He said the Water Works has been using the CIPP method on many projects for several years now, so it’s nothing new. It has several advantages. It avoids having to dig down through asphalt roads and tear out the old pipe and then replace it. That saves time and money, Burchfield said, and it means crews don’t have to block traffic and detour it around repair sites. It also has the added advantage of being safer, too.

“Any time you have to cut through asphalt, it’s expensive,” he said. “Then you have to replace the asphalt.”

Burchfield said CIPP isn’t ideal for all sewer repairs, but it’s tailor made for the one in the park district because it involves a long, straight section of sewer.

There are about 2,200 feet of pipe under the park that will be repaired in 300-400-foot sections until it’s finished, Burchfield said. The project began last week and is set to wrap up on June 10.

So what the heck is the big black pipe for, you ask? It’s called a pump-around, Burchfield said. In order to do the CIPP work, the sewer has to be empty. So everything that would otherwise be flowing through the old pipe is being detoured around the work site in that big black pipe. So I’d steer clear of it.

This story was originally published May 22, 2016 at 9:19 PM with the headline "What’s with the mystery pipe in the park?."