CAHOKIA HEIGHTS, Ill —
Construction crews are preparing to install new durable plastic linings inside aging concrete sewer pipes in Cahokia Heights.
Cracks in the aging underground concrete trunk line previously led to dangerous flooding issues in the region, with hazardous sewage waste backing up into homes and businesses.
Local city officials hosted prominent politicians from Washington D.C. to break ground on the $4.6 million dollar 'Sanitary Sewer Trunkline Rehabilitation' project on Monday morning.
A top colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the new project promises a more stable future for homeowners.
"It's a rare alignment of the stars that we get the community, the county, the state, and the federal agencies all on the same sheet of music at the same time while funding is available," U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Colonel Andy Pannier said. "And we don't want to miss these opportunities."
Rising water levels in the low-lying flood plain have kept sewer line repairmen busy for decades.
"Being on the river bottoms here, the ground goes like this a lot," Water and Sewer Department worker James Culpepper said, making hand gestures to show the rise of flood waters. "You know, when the river comes up, the water table comes up with it. Them pipes are floating, and when that sewer gas gets to the tops of them pipes, they just snap."
The veteran union laborer, now with the city's water and sewer department, described how poor design and rising water compounded a naturally occurring problem.
"They installed these (concrete pipes) 50, 60 years ago, whenever they was installed," Culpepper said. "Well, they didn't know that the sewer gas rises."
Eventually, enough water from below and gas from within put immense pressure on those pipes. Breaks in sewer lines have resulted in devastating consequences for homeowners living in the flood plain.
"I've heard directly about the impact of raw sewage coming out of government pipes into their homes, and what that has meant for their own personal safety and health," U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Illinois) said.
Politicians under pressure to fix those pipes broke ground on the new project Monday alongside experts who described how the cured lining will slide into existing pipe to minimize community disruption.
Colonel Pannier described the new technology as "a pipe-in-a-pipe style technology. So it won't be invasive, digging up and putting in all the new pipe."
"From what I understand, this should last a lifetime," Culpepper said.
For some residents, a lifetime is almost how long it took for help to finally arrive.
"You know, there have been a lot of promises made in this community for a lot of years," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said.
This project in a majority-Black community comes in a presidential election year where President Biden is under increasing pressure to improve his sinking polling with Black voters.
"Does Joe Biden have a story to tell about what he's done in his first term as president? You bet the hell he does," Durbin said when asked about the President's recent slide in the polls. "And we're standing here today working with infrastructure funds that were created because of his leadership. The previous president, who is running again on the Republican side, had no infrastructure bill in four years. None. President Biden has had one that makes a difference, an historic difference. Stories like that, I think, are going to win the election in November."
Insituform Technologies USA, LLC, a construction firm based in Chesterfield, Missouri, won the contract to perform the work. Crews plan to complete the project next spring.
