The $41 million Port Washington Lateral pipeline project, an underground gas supply pipe, will forever change the harbor area of Port Washington, Wis.

When the pipeline goes into service in December, it will supply the Port Washington Generating Station, which has relied on coal to generate electricity for seven decades. The first phase of plant construction began in 2003 and will be followed by a second phase in 2005.

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The work removes an eyesore, a coal pile from Port Washington's harbor area, and allows We Energies, the trade name for Wisconsin Electric Power and Wisconsin Gas, to remove the second of two towering smokesstacks from the plant.

It has not been an easy job. Burying a 17-mi. run of pipe - 14 mi. of 24-in. pipe and 3 mi. of 20-in. pipe - stretching from Jackson, Wis., to the shore of Lake Michigan required plenty of preplanning and delicate handling.

Division of Work

The pipeline construction began in May.

"There were really two parts to the project," said Joseph Versnel, president of New Berlin-based Arby Construction, the prime contractor for the entire lateral installation of the pipeline. "A rural piece was laid primarily out in agricultural areas, and the more urban lay beside city streets in Port Washington."

To get the pipeline laid efficiently, Arby performed the urban portion of the project and subcontracted the rural portion to H.C. Price of Dallas.

"H.C. Price is more of an intrastate pipeline contractor," Versnel said. He added that the rural sections of the pipeline could be laid in a streamlined, assembly-line type of operation, while the urban work required more of a delicate, contained operation.

"The challenges on the urban portion of the project were making sure we had proper traffic control and minimizing disruption to the areas we were affecting," Versnel said.

Crews worked at opposite ends of the project, connecting the two segments where the pipe size changes from 24 in. to 20 in.
This joint operation required communication.

"We had an overall project manager's morning meeting every day with us and Price and We Energies," Versnel said. "Everyone kept abreast of where everyone else was working and what the issues were."

On the urban side of the pipeline, issues included traffic control, minimization of disruption to area businesses and the problems of working in a tight, urban environment.

Some Fragile Terrain

The rural portion of the project, on which crews had the luxury of working in an assembly-line fashion, presented an entirely different set of challenges, including a significant amount of wetland under which the pipe had to be laid.

"We Energies worked with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to establish construction procedures for every tract of land that was designated a wetland," Versnel said. "Sometimes we had to bore underneath it and sometimes we allowed to do open cuts, to cut right through it."

Boring beneath the wetlands, and beneath Interstate 43, required six horizontal drills, one of which was 3,000 ft. long.

The biggest concern in boring beneath the wetlands and the highway was the possibility of "frac-outs" - a release of material to the surface.

"In a frac-out, seepage comes to the surface and looks like a mud pile extending out," said Mark Haas, project manager for We Energies. He said that the seepage is bentonite clay, the nontoxic substance used to clean out the hole. But it can be a mess and can cause a problem in the wetlands and on the highway if it is not cleaned up immediately.

"We were very cautious and had cleanup crews with vacuum trucks standing by to address is right away," Haas added.

Crews also used large wooden mats to protect the wetland areas as they worked. Crews and machinery were restricted to the mats, which distributed their weight over a large area and protected the ground from damage.

Leaving No Footprints

Laying the pipeline is not the end of the project. A cleanup phase returns the affected land by trench digging to the state it was in before the project began.

"If we are crossing someone's front lawn we will lay sod," Versnel said. "If we are crossing a county road we have to replace the road. If we are crossing a farmer's field, we have to put the topsoil back correctly."

Haas called it a "long process" and said the power company had to file environmental impact and construction impact statements with the state's Public Service Commission.

The process required testifying at hearings to explain the reasons for doing the project. The DNR and Wisconsin Department of Agriculture also had a voice in the early decisions and planning.

Once the project had the green light, the next task was securing easements for the project.

"We had to collect approximately 80 easements," Haas said. He added that We Energies had to take both temporary and permanent easements to create a path for the pipeline.

"The permanent easement was 30 ft. wide," he said. "We paralleled the high-tension transmission line corridor. Our easement abutted their easement so that we were not creating much more of a corridor than is already there." A temporary easement of 45 to 75 ft. was required for the actual installation of the pipeline.

Since the project serves to better the power infrastructure, We Energies has the right of eminent domain. If an easement settlement cannot be reached with property owners along the path of the pipeline, the power company can take the landowner to court to condemn the land in question.

"This whole process has to start about two years before construction," Haas said.

Work on the project actually commenced in December 2001, when STS Consultants Ltd. in Milwaukee began mapping several possible pipeline routes.

Gerry Carlson, principal surveyor for STS, said the firm will be on the job to the end, using a global positioning system for each 40-ft. length of pipe once it is in the ground. The firm then will prepare as-built drawings to provide pipe locations for any future maintenance and repairs.