Water and sewer team tough out winter

LYNN – Down in a hole on Tucker Street, Nick Costantino stands up to his thighs in water while snow falls and his fellow Water and Sewer Commission workers try to figure how to fix a broken water pipe located feet away from a natural gas line.Costantino and other members of Water and Sewer General Foreman Jerry Haggerty’s crew have worked night and day fixing broken pipes under local streets this winter, including 60 breaks in January caused by freezing temperatures followed by gradual thawing, then more freezing.”You’re basically on call all winter,” Haggerty said.Water and Sewer crews like Haggerty’s are responsible for repairing underground pipes, including the Tucker Street “relay” connecting a water main running down the center of this side street of Western Avenue to a home service box.Digging a hole to reach the pipe is only the first step in a job that Haggerty and his co-workers perform in good weather and bad. Finding the broken pipe section on Tucker involves pumping out cold, muddy water from the hole while working foreman Peter Turco carefully widens the hole with a backhoe.Costantino and water craftsmen Larry Marshall and John Houlihan take turns climbing into the hole wearing wader-like rubber pants and shoveling away muddy clumps. Because the break occurred close to a gas line, the work proceeds carefully. Haggerty said some pipe repair jobs require crews to work around live electrical lines, communication lines as well as gas lines.”These are dangers that are extremely bad,” said Costantino.He said the common joke about one guy working in a hole while four or five others stand around masks the truth about pipe repair jobs: One worker cannot work safely without others preparing to take a turn in the hole while keeping a cautious eye out for potential hazards posed by utility lines and signs of potential cave-ins.Marshall said underground pipe repair jobs, with all the complications they pose, can easily pin down crews for 20 hours repairing three pipe breaks in different parts of the city.The tools of the trade for hole digging are predictable and unpredictable: Shovels and picks are used, but the workers also employ a strange, door knob-like device called an earphone to find leaks.”We even use divining rods,” said Marshall.A mason by training, Costantino has worked for Water and Sewer for six years and said January’s freezing temperatures found him on a recent night repair job on Menlo Avenue, where he took turns working in a muddy, water-filled hole until the foreman sent him into a warm cellar to hook up a temporary water supply to a home.”It was the only thing that saved my feet, I swear,” he said.The key to surviving a day repairing pipes is to dress in layers, said Marshall. He wears warm-up pants over long underwear and a pair of insulated bib overalls over the warm up pants. The finishing touch in his working wardrobe is a pair of old rubber “fireman’s pants.””Lots of times you’re getting sprayed in the face and, in February, it’s freezing,” Houlihan said.All of the workers wear cloth and canvas gloves bought in bulk and discarded once work in the hole takes it toll on the handwear. Costantino wears latex gloves under his work gloves for extra protection.Haggerty’s men had to call a co-worker Thursday to bring them a new pump after the one they brought to Tucker Street refused to start. When the new pump arrived, Costantino wrestled the 40-pound machine into place next to the hole and stuck an empty Dunkin’ Donuts cup into the pump’s drain hole to create suction.”Use your mind and save time,” he said.