Contributed by Ben Clabaugh, Senior Project Manager, PPM Consultants
It was 1992. Nirvana was topping the charts, “Friends” was still two years away, and cell phones were the size of a brick. I was a fresh-faced hydrogeologist, barely out of grad school, working for a multi-national environmental consulting firm in Indianapolis. Today, after 33 years in this field, I can look back and laugh at my rookie mistakes, miscues, and near misses—especially the one that turned me into the accidental maestro of a municipal waterworks disaster. This is a story of nostalgia, lessons learned, and the fine art of covering your ass.
I was sent to an industrial facility and tasked with overseeing installation of several groundwater monitoring wells. This was my first time supervising a drill crew. There I was: spotless white hard hat, un-scuffed steel-toed boots, clipboard and Site Map in hand, going around planting flags to mark where my Project Manager said wells needed to be installed.
Enter the lineman from the City’s water utility (call before you dig!), a grizzled veteran wielding what I swear was a View-Master—not some high-tech gizmo, but like that toy from the 1960s. For you young’uns, a View-Master was a clunky stereoscope kids used to flip through 3D picture slides of Yosemite or Disney characters.
The lineman sorted through a beat-up file box, selected a few slides, inserted them into the relic, clicked through image after image, then took out a can of blue spray paint and confidently sprayed a line across the grass. He pointed at the line. “There’s a 36-inch water main right there. Serves water to half the City.” He pointed at my flag. “You’ll need to move that location.”
Before planting the flag, I had looked around, spotted the sewer and water main manhole covers, saw the fire hydrant, lined things up, and thought the spot was okay. But we were talking about a 36-inch water main, and he was the one with the View-Master, so I plucked my flag from the ground and shuffled it a few feet to the east.
He considered it momentarily, shook his head and said, “A few feet more. You should be good…”. Then he simply pointed and said, “…over there”. I moved to the spot he indicated and replanted my flag. I came back the next day, met the drill crew, lined them up over the flag, and they got started. Everything was going along just fine, until we got to a depth of around 13 feet when we heard and felt the drill bit start grinding on something hard.
Keep in mind that as of about 12,000 years ago, this part of Indiana was at the southern edge of continental glacier that is miles thick. As the massive ice sheet receded, it left behind a thick blanket of glacial till—a dense mix of clay, silt, sand, gravel, cobbles, and even large boulders. So, hitting a big chunk of granite while trying to drill a well was pretty common and not anything to worry about…usually.
Have you ever seen those old film reels from the early days of the Texas oil boom? They all show a bunch of guys working a drill rig, just going about their business. Then all of a sudden, there’s a rumble. Everyone glances back and forth at one another. Then they turn a run. There’s an explosion of noise, and the entire rig jerks and bucks. Drill pipe shoots out of the hole, and within seconds, black gold is fountain-ing up out of the ground.
It was sort of like that.
There was a sound like a gunshot followed by a metallic CLANG! The drill stem slammed up against the “cat head” with such force it made my teeth rattle. Mud shot out through the gaps around the drive cap and water started welling up around the augers, first bubbling like a gentle spring, then surging with increasing force.
The head driller scrambled into the drill rig cab and started the engine, while the helpers scattered. I sprinted the 14-mile to the facility office to call my project manager and the water company. (Remember, it’s 1992—no cell phones.)
A few minutes later, I emerged from the building and froze. A massive roar filled the air, and where the drill rig had been, there was thick, powerful geyser blasting 100 feet into the air. Stupefied, I walked back to connect with the drillers. Cold spray fell like rain, soaking everything within a fifty-yard radius. A crowd of neighbors had gathered, and trucks with yellow flashing lights were careening down the road.
As the chaos unfolded around me, survival instincts kicked in. I grabbed my Kodak Instamatic (another relic for the nostalgia pile) and methodically documented everything: the blue paint line in the grass showing the water line location in the wrong place, my survey flags, and a length of drill pipe poking up out of the hole, abandoned by the driller when he drove the rig to safety. Each click of the shutter captured proof of my innocence—click, wind the film, click, wind the film. CYA in action.
The lineman from before, View-Master in hand, stepped out of a yellow-flashing truck, avoiding eye contact with me, and huddled with the growing band of utility workers. I tensed, but he ignored me completely. By that evening, the utility had managed to patch the pipe and fill in the hole. I dropped my roll of film off at the CVS for 24-hr processing and headed home. I learned that evening that half the city lost water that day, including my roommate mid-shower as he was getting ready for work, but at least it was over.
Nope.
You see, when the high-pressure water scoured out a hole about 20 feet across, it revealed an elbow in the pipe just past the damaged section. After the repair, when the utility workers back-filled the hole, they failed to properly support that elbow. It gave way sometime in the night.
Next morning when I got to the site, there was another geyser—bigger and angrier than before. News crews joined the chaos this time. I kept my crew on the factory’s far side all day. We finished early, and I picked up my film from the CVS on the way back to the office. Good thing, too—the CEO called me to ask me what the heck was going on. But I had photos in hand showing we were in the clear.
Lessons learned? Listen to your elders but also trust your gut. When something doesn’t feel right, speak up—and when you can’t, document everything. Those pics saved my bacon—and reminded me that even a View-Master can’t always see the truth.