Flashback 2011: The Main Event—Replacing city's century-old water mains

City workers repairing a water pipe (Sun-Times file photo)

     This week I was talking with someone in the water department regarding an upcoming story, and mentioned this column from 2011 which, to my surprise, I've never posted here before. What I remember most about this is piece how it came about. I was having coffee with Rahm Emanuel—mayors other than Lori Lightfoot did that kind of thing—and he said something like, "You never write about me," and I replied, at least in memory, "You're not interesting."

     Unfair! The mayor said: he had just gotten approval for this big water main project. 

     I explained that if I wrote about the funding, I'd just be ballyhooing his administration. But when the pipes actually went in the ground, I'd be right there. And so I was. It took a while to get this in the paper, and I remember bumping into him—mayors other than Lori Lightfoot went about in public, and you could run into them—and him saying, "Where's my water story?" or words to that effect. 

     Water is the most democratic thing the city of Chicago does. Residents of the fanciest penthouse to the meanest flophouse expect clean, cold, Lake Michigan water to flow whenever they open a tap.
     Everybody pays the same: $2.01 per thousand gallons, whether at Navy Pier, next to the Jardine water plant, or every one of the 125 far-flung suburbs that buys Chicago water.
     At least until Jan. 1, when the price jumps to $2.50 per thousand gallons, the hike intended to pay for Mayor Rahm Emanuel's ambitious 10-year plan of infrastructure improvements, a massive effort to correct years of neglect.
     Chicago is crisscrossed with 4,300 miles of water mains, from enormous trunk lines five feet in diameter to the little six-inch feeders that run down residential streets, a billion gallons a day coursing through the system.
     In the past, the city replaced these mains at the rate of about 29 miles a year.
     Which sounds impressive until you do the math: At that rate, each main is replaced once every 148 years.
     That's bad.
     Bad because pipes do not last forever, particularly not in Chicago, with its 30-below-zero winters and 100-degree summers.
     Buried iron pipes expand and contract, eventually cracking. Small leaks undermine the ground beneath the pipes, causing them to sag and snap. Inside, minerals from the water build up, like an artery choked with cholesterol—a process called "tuberculation"—so that a six-inch main only has the capacity of a three-inch pipe.
     Meanwhile, the outside corrodes, the walls grow fragile.
     How fragile?
     One length of water main replaced this fall on West Superior between Leclaire and Cicero was laid in 1894 and 1900. Crews couldn't dig closer than two feet to the old main; any closer and the 40 pounds of pressure inside might burst the pipe.
     "The pressure of the ground is basically holding the pipe together," said resident engineer Steven Skrabutenas. "Then you've got 600 gallons of water a minute flowing into your work trench. It doesn't take long to fill up a hole, and you have to do an emergency shutdown and repair it."
     About 20 percent—roughly 1,000 miles—of Chicago mains are a century old or older, according to the Department of Water Management.
     They must be replaced, at a cost of about $2.2 million a mile, including the cost of replacing the street.
     That's why, in mid-October, Emanuel released his new budget calling for a boost in water bills, 25 percent now, then 15 percent every year for the next three years, the increase going to repair Chicago's decrepit mains and sewers.
     "We need to invest in our infrastructure to maintain the quality of life for people across the city, protect our homes from flooding and our cars from sinkholes," said Emanuel. "If we don't invest and proactively make upgrades to our system, we will continually be forced to react and make emergency repairs at a greater cost to everyone."
     The plan is to raise the rate of replacement toward 90 miles a year over 10 years.
     A monumental task, as can be seen by watching just one repair job—"Item 120"—the installation of 1,974 feet of eight-inch ductile iron pipe along three blocks of West Superior.
     The first shovelful of dirt was turned on Sept. 29, with an exploratory hole dug to take a look at what's down there—you can't just start digging on a city street, which conceals not only water and sewer pipes, but also gas mains, AT&T cables and buried electric lines. You have to figure out what's where.
     "Everything is records," explained Skrabutenas, who carries around a little orange notebook filled with his meticulous engineer's handwriting. "Everything I got is here in record books. I got the pipes. I know where everything is at, what we did, how many feet, the pieces, the locations, what parts I use."
     He took out plans, large technical maps of the underground as Chicago believes it to be. He uses them as a guide but also constantly updates and fills in gaps—about 5 percent of the network under city streets isn't recorded, because the information was lost, set down wrong, or never noted to begin with.
     Sometimes things show up that aren't supposed to be there or are there but unmarked. A gas line that's labeled inactive might turn out to be live.
     "I'll give you an example," Skrabutenas said, spreading the plans across the hood of his truck. "This is the location of each house. This is No. 3042. From the line, the location of this is supposed to be 166 feet. I verified and saw the line, and it's not, it's 159 feet. So I upgraded it to tell them how it really is. . . . You want to check everything."
      Infrastructure is in three dimensions, so they need to know not only where these lines are, but also how deep.
     "Do I have room to go over, or do I need to do something else?" he asked. "I want to verify where it is so it all works."
     Once they knew what was under West Superior, work began in early October, with a machine crushing the pavement in a four-foot-wide stretch along the south curb, and then a backhoe digging a trench five feet deep—water mains in Chicago must be at least that deep or they'll freeze in winter.
     The trench is dug by a track excavator with a two-foot-wide bucket.
     Backhoe operator John Dombroski worked a joystick, following the hand signals of his "top man" standing at the lip of the trench.
     "I won't even watch the bucket, I watch his hand," said Dombroski.
     "He's so good he could comb your hair with the teeth of the bucket," added Skrabutenas.
     An additional benefit of Emanuel's plan, besides critical infrastructure improvement, is the addition of 1,800 construction jobs—both at the water department and its contractors and suppliers.
     Working a water crew is a good job but at times a tough one.
     Because water goes everywhere in the city, water crews find themselves in places where they're happy to be inside a trench.
     "This isn't the best place to work, danger-wise," said foreman Stan DeCaluwe, noting that most at risk are the area residents. "The last site, two men were shot on the corner about 120 feet away from where we were digging."
     But gunplay is a rarity.
     "Mostly our problems are theft on the job site," said DeCaluwe. Tool lockers get broken into.
     The new main is eight inches in diameter—to increase the capacity to larger buildings that might be built in decades to come.
     The new pipes are 18 feet long, and their manufacturer suggests they're good for 300 years, coated with a protective resin outside, wrapped in plastic and lined with concrete. They are also ductile iron, which has a little more give.
     "You've got more forgiveness," said Michael Sturtevant, deputy commissioner for engineering services.
     One of the more surprising aspects of the process is that the new main was set in place, then covered back up with dirt.
     "You can't leave these trenches open," said Skrabutenas. "I can't shut this block down for a month."
     The new main was pressure tested—100 pounds for two hours, to check for leaks, then flushed with chlorine for 24 hours, to sanitize it and prevent bacteria from being introduced into the system.
     On Nov 17, after 34 days of work, service was transferred to the new main, house by house, and the old main was shut off. It's left in the ground—there's no point to remove it.
     From now until April, the water crews will focus on leaks.
     "If something is going to fail, typically it fails more often in the wintertime," said DeCaluwe. "Everything's hampered by cold weather."
         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 27, 2011

Ukraine’s woes may foretell our own

By Damien Hirst

     Nobody cries like a bully.
     One moment they’re standing over some sprawled victim, fists doubled, hurling abuse. The next they’re waving a hand in the air, weeping over the boo-boo on their knuckle.
     It’s a disgusting display, seen the world round. The truth — you’re beating up the weaker kid, because you can, and because doing so makes you feel good — can’t be recognized. So a pretext must be found.
     At times there is almost a ritual aspect to it. Haters and despots clutch at their chests and pretend their aggression has a reason, that they are the victims.
     This curious ceremony was seen again in the days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A flutter of official indignation as the Russian army massed around its neighbor.
     “Stop this hysteria about the intentions of Russia in the region,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin demanded.
     If there was any push for war, he said, it comes from the Ukrainians, or the Americans.
     “I believe in diplomacy,” Vershinin said.
     He could have been sincere. Shelling cities might be considered an extension of diplomacy, in a Clausewitzian sense (“War,” the Prussian general once wrote, “is merely the continuation of policy by other means.”)
     At least the people invading their neighbor have a reason to lie. What excuse does the Red State hallelujah chorus have? Beyond craven envy of a leader unconstrained by law or conscience.
     Me, I saw the invasion and gave thanks for Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
     What? Forgotten already? Let me remind you. The House of Representatives impeached Trump in December 2019.

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'What no one did for us'

     To view history as a factual rendition of what previously occurred is perhaps naive. There is too much of it, and one must always pay attention to who is telling the story, and why. The devil is in the details.  
     The assumption—so often mistaken—is that others are striving to achieve historical accuracy. When that isn't their goal at all. Rather, the point of history, to them, is to salve their own inflamed and aching sense of self. To make their boo-boo better. In this common condition, all bets are off. Grandiosity is as human a condition as bilateral symmetry,  and almost as common. Though it leads to all sorts of ludicrous situation, where people simultaneously portray themselves as heroes and victims—boldly striving across the world stage while at the same time continually betrayed by their inferiors.      
     I noticed the following on a Facebook friend's feed Sunday:

     Typically, I try to avoid Facebook disputes. But I couldn't in good conscious hurry past this one. So I flopped by fingers on the keyboard, and pointed out that the Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and France and Great Britain declared war on Germany two days later. Not neglect in the usual sense of the word. The "no one did for us"concept is both wrong, and an indictment of the "support so much" claim. Nobody seems to be declaring war on Russia.
      Not yet anyway.
     I went back to the friend's page the next day, and noticed the she had simply deleted the post, leaving an undisturbed chain of cute cats and lovely birds. Which is the fate of history that doesn't sit back and applaud our own precious selves. It simply vanishes.

Don’t buy paczki on Paczki Day

Dobra Bielinski, right, with her mother, Stasia Hawryszczuk.

     First, say it right.
     The word “paczki” is not, as I sometimes do, pronounced “pash-key,” like artist Ed Paschke.
     Nor “push-key,” like the Jewish charity box.
     “Punch-key” is close. But not quite.
     “Poinch-key,” said Warsaw-born Dobra Bielinski, of the Polish pastry so ethereal it has its own holiday in Chicago, Paczki Day, Tuesday March 1. “That’s how you properly pronounce it.”
     Bielinski is pastry chef and owner of Delightful Pastries, 5927 Lawrence Ave., and with my fierce commitment to shoe leather reporting, I sat down with her Friday to talk and eat paczki — the word is plural. “Paczek” is singular, though good luck limiting yourself to one. I couldn’t.
     Second, they’re not doughnuts.
     “What’s the difference between a paczki and a doughnut?” asked Bielinski. “Doughnuts have water and yeast and whatever the hell they put in. They’re very, very sweet. Paczki are not very sweet. There’s butter, eggs and milk inside the dough. That’s very important.”
     “Because they’re part of the cleaning out of ingredients in your house,” added James Beard Award-winning chef Gale Gand, who Bielinski worked under as a young baker. Gand swung by Delightful Pastries on Friday to join us.
     Paczki Day is also known as Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” the blowout before the 40-day denial of Lent.
     “Certain old-school Catholics don’t do desserts,” Bielinski said. “I don’t see them in my store except to buy bread.”
     Third: It’s what’s around the fillings that’s important.
     “We eat paczki for the dough, not the filling,” Bielinski said. “Polish people judge paczki by the dough. The filling is the cherry on the top.”
     Though not actual cherry, at least not here. Bielinski sells the trinity of traditional fillings, “The Pantheon” she calls it: raspberry preserves, rose petal jelly and plum butter, augmented by 10 more haute flavors, like salted caramel and apricot, fresh strawberry and custard topped with chocolate fudge, not to forget her “drunken” paczki in flavors like lemon and moonshine or Jameson whiskey with chocolate custard.
     A reminder that, fourth: Don’t underestimate the sophistication of a bakery just because it’s Polish.

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Русский военный корабль: иди на хуй.

 

     Cowardice and surrender are hardwired into the human psyche. If nothing else, we've learned that over the past six years, as powerful people—senators and representatives, TV pundits and internet stars—have betrayed their country, their supposed values, and themselves, to curl up cooing the lap of a swaggering traitor.
     But not everybody takes the easy route. Not everyone looks to their own ease and comfort first. Those who risk their lives rebuke those who won't risk a bit of power and what they consider prestige but is actually deathless shame. If you aren't following the Russian invasion of Ukraine closely—and I can hardly blame you—and haven't heard of the incident on Snake Island, allow me to fill you in.
     When the invasion began, a Russian warship confronted the garrison on "a tiny island in the Black Sea ... a speck of land south of the port of Odessa," according to a Reuters account.
     "I am Russian warship," the ship radioed, in Russian. "Lay down your weapons and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise you will be bombed. Repeat: I am a Russian warship."
     The reply will live in the annals of defiance:
     "Russian warship: go fuck yourself."

     There was a too-good-to-be-true element to the story that gave me pause. Though the president of Ukraine lauded the 13 guards who "died heroically" after the Russian warship fired on the island. Later reports questioned whether any died at all. 
      To me, the important thing is the resistance, not the casualty count.  While propaganda must always a concern, particularly in war, a recording seems to exist, and the general consensus right now is that the bold retort occurred.

     One more caveat. It's human nature to focus on the thrilling part of the narrative, and we should keep in mind that the invasion is still an overwhelming disaster with the odds severely stacked against Ukraine. Sometimes you have to gaze without mitigation at the death and loss and ruin. Turning everyone into Anne Frank is merely a more subtle form of holocaust denial.
       Still, when the battle is raging, it is fitting to focus on the brave resistance. And not just on Snake Island. Ukrainian citizens returning to fight. Staging protests around the world. Others joining in solidarity. The Russian assault stalling at the get go. So there is hope. And there is Snake Island, a modern Alamo, for the moment. We should take the encouragement it offers. The battle is weak against strong, but also good against evil, truth against lies. It's that simple, and hardly surprising that the MAGA crowd has gone all in for Putin. Trump called the invasion "pretty smart," as if it were a savvy land grab. (As do some on the Left, Rev. Jesse Jackson arguing that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and they've bad people, anyway). 
     The key mistake in the Russian demand was the word "unnecessary" (or "unjustified.") This fight is completely necessary, here and there. Despotism never gives up; it only loses. Resistance is not merely justified; it is required.

Wilmette Notes: Normal

     The question of who are strangers and who are "us" is perhaps the fundamental issue of all human societies. One we see constantly reflected in many, if not most, of the issues we confront every day. Saturday correspondent Caren Jeskey, writing at this fraught time in international affairs, brings a keen, compassionate eye to the issue. Her report:

By Caren Jeskey

     So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since
     Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And
     since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
            — Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

     My friend Stacey and I have a history of laughing at inappropriate times. Nervous laughter is an automatic way for the body to regulate when a person feels an emotion they’d rather not feel. So please don’t judge us for cracking up at a dinner table in a home outside of Kumasi in Ghana, West Africa back when we were in our twenties. Our well intentioned host reminded me of Mrs. Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances. She seemed unable to see us and be present, and instead was offering us a performative experience of the home she wanted us to perceive. The problem was the absurdity of the situation in her home, and the practiced way she was treating us. (Though I must add that I am very grateful that she had us, and tried).

Akan memorial head,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

      Stacey is a black woman and I am white. When we got to Ghana one of the most surprising things was that we were both called obruni, a word in the local Twi language for white man. When we’d step off of our tour bus, people would gather and point with an unabashed curiosity and call out “Obruni! Obruni!” My black companions balked. “Why are they calling us that word?” Some of them voiced that they thought they’d feel more welcomed home upon their arrival to their Motherland. Instead, they found that they were considered just as much outsiders as I was and as a white man would have been.
     I have since learned that obruni means white man in Twi, but it also means foreigner, depending on the dialect. It might be said in an affectionate manner, or it might be said distrustfully— as in “don’t trust the outsider.”
     Stacey’s and my host for the week was a Ghanaian woman who ran a local restaurant. She had a white Jesus posted prominently in her living room, and she seemed to have a thing for me. Instead of treating us equally, she made eye contact with only me, not Stacey. When she knocked on our door to let us know a meal was ready she’d address only me. “Caren! Breakfast is ready!” Stacey and I would reel at the rudeness, and then laugh our butts off from behind the closed door.
     There was a pregnant teenage girl sleeping on the floor of our host’s home, and being treated as a servant.  Stacey and I were already on edge, and as we sat at the table eating one day, the skinny teen bowing and scraping and serving us, we just lost it. We laughed so hard we cried. Our host thought we were insane, and we could not explain. The next day the trip coordinators found us a new host home where we felt more comfortable. I truly hope this woman and her baby fared well.
     Lately, memories have been flooding back to me, as though I am watching my life flash by through the window of a train.
     This was the week I decided to venture out into a public event for the first time since "Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!" at Harris Theater last October. I was invited to the opening of the Frida Kahlo immersion experience at Lighthouse ArtSpace on Wednesday evening, vaccine cards and masks required. I put on a dress for the first time in ages. It felt good. Normal.
     I welcomed the exposure to art and music, and the sheer beauty of the space, but it did feel odd. It will take a while to feel OK about being in the world again. I got to spend time with Sylvia Puente who had received the invitation, and kindly asked me along. When I picked her up I got out of the car for a long, heart-to-heart hug with the dear friend I was seeing for the first time since last summer, due to my extreme COVID hermitism.
     Tragically, the next day we awoke to terror in the air with the Russian invasion of Ukraine adding a new level of helplessness to the world. I decided, that day, to reach out to Stacey since she is one of the few people in the world with whom I am sure to have a good laugh of two. It’s a gift to have people who help us feel seen, understood, stimulated, humored, safe, and loved.

   Yesterday, Stacey and I had our first phone call in years, and it was as refreshing as I knew it would be. Her words, as always, were powerful and comforting. Stacey is a high school teacher. I was moved to think of the good fortune those young people have, with such a steady presence as their teacher.
     Listening to Stacey speak is like being in a pool of natural hot spring water at just the right temperature—the sun peeking gently through a canopy of trees, a cool breeze rattling aspen branches and prompting songbirds. The timbre and cadence of her voice, as well as the wisdom that spills out of her, is a testament that the deepest calm can come without the use of mind altering substances.
     Stacey also works with organizations to improve their group dynamics, and recently added her expertise to the team at the Chicago Greater Food Depository. She guides people to “realign and redesign existing relationships within and beyond the organization to co-create believable, relevant, measurable organizational change.”
     In this world of too many dilemmas to sort out, our best recourse is what Dr. Victor Frankl, who spent three years in his late 30s in four Nazi torture camps, is to “find meaning in life, and free will.” (I am quoting and paraphrasing from Wikipedia). This can be done “by making a difference in the world, by having particular experiences, or by adopting particular attitudes.”
     In order to focus on one’s purpose, the background noise of anxiety, self-doubt, depression and fear can be tamped down by what Frankl teaches in his logotherapy practice. We can use paradoxical intention where we learn to overcome obsessions or anxieties by self-distancing and humorous exaggeration, through dereflection, which draws our attention away from painful, debilitating symptoms since hyper-reflection can lead to inaction, and via Socratic dialogue and attitude modification; asking questions designed to pursue self-defined meaning in life. If a man whose mother and brother were murdered by Hitler's minions, and who spent four years interred, can put one foot in front of the other, heal, grow, and thrive in some ways, I believe we too have a chance.

                 When we blindly adopt a religious,a political system, 

                  a literary dogma, 

                  we become automatons. We cease to grow. 

                                                                            —Anais Nin

Strangers on a train

     “Excuse me; is this the right track for the train going downtown?” an older man asked Tuesday, as we stood waiting in the Northbrook Metra station.

     I told him it is, adding that he needn’t worry about missing his stop, Union Station.
     “The train will empty out,” I said. "Everyone will get off."
     The man explained he had not been downtown in a long time, since he is retired. I asked what he did when he was working. He said he was an engineer; he did architectural drawings on the first 40 floors of the John Hancock Center.
     I asked him what was it like to work for Fazlur Khan, the great structural engineer who, along with architect Bruce Graham, conceived the building in the 1960s. Those Xs on the outside of the Hancock aren’t just cool-looking — they provide structural support, freeing up floor space. It made very tall buildings economically viable for the first time.
     “He was wonderful,” the man said, proceeding to tell a story about the large technical drawings they’d produce.
     “The paper was thin, and there was only so many times you could erase it,” he said. An architect arrived with a mass of changes, and the man despaired at fitting them all on the existing drawings.
     The train arrived. I entered first, took the double seat at the front of the car, and gestured him into the seat across from me.
     The man told how he presented the situation to Khan.
     “Whenever you bring someone a problem, you should also bring a solution,” he said, excellent general work advice.

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