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New water line installed under highway

by David Reese Bigfork Eagle
| August 27, 2014 12:00 AM

Larry Stevens knows how to go under, over and around things.

Stevens on Tuesday finished welding together the final 50-foot section of 300 feet of pipe that will be inserted under Montana Highway 35 this week. The pipe will be drilled horizontally under Montana 35 next to the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses and connected to the Bigfork Water and Sewer District well near Ramsfield Road. 

Stevens is drilling superintendent for HDD, a Kalispell business that specializes in horizontal drilling. The pipe that Stevens was piecing together on Tuesday snaked up and over a hill behind him. On Thursday he’ll begin drilling the hole under the highway and pull the pipe through it from the other side. He had a horse pasture to work set the pipe on, adding 50 feet at at a time with a specialized, high-temperature welder. The machine heats the ends of two pieces of pipe to a temperature of about 500 degrees. After the pipe ends are heated for about eight minutes, the ends are pressed together by hydraulic pressure.

It will take about five hours to pull the entire length of pipe through the tunnel he’s going to drill under the highway.

“We’ve drilled some pretty bizarre places,” he said. “Under refineries, under rivers.”

His company is doing the work only to the well site, from Montana 35. Sandry Construction will be laying the water pipe from Bigfork to the HDD line at Vista Lane. 

The line will connect the Bigfork Water and Sewer District to a third well. The district will install two miles of pipe along Montana 35 from the well off of Ramsfield Road north of Bigfork, to the water and sewer district well house. 

The total cost of both phases of the project, drilling the wells and installing the pumps, is just over $3 million. The district received a $750,000 grant from the Treasure State Endowment Fund. The district is paying for the remainder from reserves and a $1.3 million loan.

The two wells Bigfork currently operates on pump 1.5 million gallons of water a day to consumers.