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REHABILITATION OF THE NORTH OUTFALL SEWER BY SLIPLINING

Yoon Cho, P.E., Ayana Armstrong, Joe Hawkins, and Bradley Jenson, P.E., City of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Engineering, Los Angeles, CA

ABSTRACT The City of Los Angeles began constructing sewers as early as the 1890s. The North Outfall Sewer (NOS) is approximately 50 miles in length and was constructed between 1924 and 1932 of reinforced concrete and lined with clay tiles and ranges in size from 24inch circular to 10.5 by 12 feet semi-elliptical. The City has recently successfully rehabilitated 5,700 feet of a 75-inch diameter section of the North Outfall Sewer by sliplining This paper will discuss the construction of the NOS Maze Phase III project. The NOS is older than most of the developments in the area, consequently the sewer is now underneath many businesses and homes. Sliplining was the only practical option to repair the sewer while it remained in service and without disrupting the developments above. Access pits located on residential streets required special considerations to accommodate the residents and allow the contractor to complete the work. This paper will discuss the access required to complete the project with the associated traffic, community relation aspects and odor control measures. The paper will also discuss the challenges in cleaning, sliplining and grouting of the sewer. This project also realigned 100 feet of sewer. This required the existing sewer to be diverted into a new pipeline. This challenge was overcome by using pre-fabricated diversion structures, which minimized the risk of sewer backups or overflows and the time the sewer was exposed. Many lessons were learned from this project that can be applied to future projects. Keywords: sliplining, odor control, scrubbers, chemical injection, grouting, rehabilitation, sewer realignment

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INTRODUCTION An integral part of the infrastructure in the City of Los Angeles is an extensive network of 6,500 miles of sewer pipelines. A large portion of these sewer lines is over 70-years old and severely deteriorated. Closed circuit television investigation of the existing sewers revealed that many of these old sewer pipes need replacement or other method of rehabilitation. As a result of the investigations, North Central Outfall Sewer North Outfall Sewer MAZE Rehabilitation Phase 3 project was initiated to rehabilitate about 5,700 feet of an existing 74-year old 75-inch diameter tile lined concrete sewer within the Crenshaw District of the City of Los Angeles. This rehabilitation work utilized a technique called sliplining where 66-inch diameter liner pipes were inserted into the existing 75-inch diameter sewer in various locations while in the presence of the sewer flow. The existing North Outfall Sewer flows could not be diverted at any time during the sewer repair and as a result, the sliplining method was chosen during design. Figure 1 below shows the route and limits of the sewer rehabilitation project. This paper will discuss the construction criteria, construction method, access and traffic control, public relations efforts, odor control measures, and a live sewer realignment method used during construction.

Figure 1 PROJECT SCOPE The North Outfall Sewer MAZE Phase 3 project was awarded to the Contractor, Mladen Buntich Construction of Sunland, California, on March 28, 2001 in the total amount of $9,243,382 with a contract duration of 625 calendar days. The project was substantially completed in August 2002, about five (5) month earlier than the originally scheduled end date. The project required nine (9) construction pits to clean and proof the existing 75-

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inch diameter sewer, slipline new 66-inch diameter pipes, grout annular spaces, and install a new bypass sewer. It also required fourteen pits for reconnecting the local sewer laterals to the new liner. For odor control, two (2) chemical injection facilities and three (3) odor control scrubbers were installed and operated. PIT LOCATIONS AND ANGLE POINTS During design, the locations of construction pits were selected within the public right of way and sewer easement after careful review of the alignment and angle points of the existing 75-inch sewer and the locations of the existing private properties. A total of nine (9) pits were selected for sewer cleaning and liner pipe insertion. In addition, two (2) open cut excavation areas were selected due to a 90 degree bend between Pit No.2 and Pit No.3 and a 36 degree bend between Pit No.5 and Pit No.6. Also, the location of Pit No.7 was chosen over an existing angle point of the sewer. The construction of these pits over and around the angle points allowed open excavation to install liner pipes from the top and eliminated the technical difficulties of pushing the rigid liner pipes through the angle points. PIPE SLIPLINING PROCESS Pit Construction The required minimum pit sizes were 15 feet wide by 15 feet long for the cleaning operation and 15 feet wide by 30 feet long for the insertion operation. The average depths of the pits were about 15 feet from the ground elevations. The pits were flooded with sewage during the cleaning and sliplining operations, and as a result, waterproofing of the pits was required to prevent leakage. During off working hours, the pits were required to be covered to seal against odor leakage. Sewer Cleaning The cleaning of the existing sewer was done using about 5 feet and/or 8 feet long and about 4 feet diameter hollow steel cylinders open at both ends. Steel baffles were installed inside of the cylinders to capture sewer debris for removal. The cleaning cylinders were pulled from one pit to the other pit using a steel cable and winches installed at both pits. The cleaning was required to be done against the direction of flow, and between any two adjacent pits, the cleaning operation was required to continue during working hours until all debris was removed. The longest reach of the cleaning between two pits was 2,200 feet and the cleaning was done from both pits in order to reduce the long travel time for the cleaning cylinders to reach and pull the debris if only one cleaning pit was used. During the cleaning process, the excessive debris at the bottom of the sewer tended to build up further blocking the sewer flow. There were few instances where the sewer flows were restricted by the debris build up and backed up the flow at the upstream pit hampering the cleaning operation. The Contractor had to pull a large steel beam through the sewer to break up the debris build-ups before cleaning could continue. The total weight of the sewer debris removed from the 5,700 feet of the 75-inch sewer and hauled away to the disposal site was 366 tons.

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Sewer Proofing After the cleaning process, pipe proofing of the existing sewer was required. Pipe proofing is a process of winching or jacking a test section or mandrel through the host pipe to verify that it has the clearance to accept the intended slipline pipe. Three different size mandrels used in this project had outside diameters that were 1-inch less than, equal to, and 1-inch greater than the outside diameter of the approved liner pipe. The mandrels were made of steel and they were required to be 20% longer than the longest slipline pipe section. Like the cleaning cylinders, the mandrels were pulled from one pit to the other pit using a steel cable and winches installed at both pits. The winches were required to deliver at least 50 tons of pushing or pulling force to the mandrels. Sewer preparation of a sewer reach was not considered complete until both (1) the final mandrel section had been pulled through the sewer reach unimpeded, and (2) all debris generated by pulling the mandrels had been removed from the sewer reach. The mandrels were large and heavy with cylindrical sharp edges and tend to get stuck in the sewer where there were excessive pipe joint offsets. The offsets were expected to be up to 4-inches. When the mandrels were stuck, there were three options to overcome the problem: repeat retrieve and pull action of the mandrels until obstruction was gone, modify the cylindrical sharp edges to transitional edges by welding steel plates, or excavate and break the sewer at the location where the mandrel was stuck to free it up. Under this project we over came the joint offset problems by using the first two options. Pipe Sliplining After the completion of the pipe proofing process, the liner pipe insertion machine was lowered and installed in a 15 feet wide by 30 feet long sewer access pit which was built on the top of the existing 75-inch sewer. The insertion machine, Akkerman SLS 50/100, contained an instrumentation system that could continuously display and record as well as mechanically produce a record of the direct total force in tons being applied to the liner pipe during insertion operation. The machines thrust force capacity was 50 tons with optional upgrade capacity of 100 tons. The sliplining pipe thrust force includes pipe friction (the friction coefficient of slipliner against wet host pipe must be assumed to be at least 0.15 times the dead weight), length of pipe drive, roughness of host pipe, and the flow. The average thrust force applied by the machine during the sliplining was about 15 tons. The machine also contained an integral elevator system capable of lowering the liner pipe into position for installation while restraining the liner pipe from movement due to the flow forces from the sewage flow. The sliplining pipes are called Centrifugal Cast Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer Mortar (CCFRPM) pipes as specified in the Standard Specifications For Public Works Construction (SSPWC) Sections 207-20 and 500-1.8, as modified. The pipes were manufactured by Hobas USA, Houston, Texas. For the sliplining applications, flush bellspigot joints were used, and for the direct burial applications, flush FWC coupling joints were used. The pipe stiffness was minimum 31 psi and 48 psi, respectively. Both joints allowed a joint angular deflection between 1 and 2 degrees.

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The pipe sliplining (jacking) was required to begin within three calendar days after the host pipe was proofed in order to prevent debris buildup within the cleaned portion of the pipe. The delivered sliplining pipes were lifted up and lowered into the pit by a crane, and the insertion machine lowered the pipe into the existing sewer pipe which was open at the upper half. Once the sliplining pipe was lowered into the sewer, the pipe was guided to mate the previously sliplined pipe, and the insertion machine pushed the entire string of installed pipes. (See Figure 2 below) The initial fine-tuning and adjustment of the insertion machine and installation of the first 6 pieces of the 20-foot section pipes took a good working day. However, after the initial adjustments and the initial pipe installations, it took about 5 minutes to install one section of the pipe. As a result, in one instance, it took less than 8 hours to install 1,800 feet of the 66-inch diameter liner pipes. Once pipe jacking began, it was required to continue uninterrupted until the lead slipline pipe reached the other pit. During the sliplining, pit-to-pit flow control was allowed to float the liner pipe to overcome any existing sewer pipe offsets at the invert of the sewer. However, the Contractor did not experience any severe offset problems during the sliplining and did not utilize the flow control method. The pipe jacking was generally in the direction of flow, however, due to field conditions, there were two instances where sliplining was done against the direction of flow. The project did not experience any major problems in sliplining and was considered a very successful operation.

Insertion machine pushes in liner pipe Figure 2 Annular Space Grouting: The sliplining created an annular space between the existing 75-inch diameter sewer and the new 66-inch diameter sliplined pipes. After the completion of the pipe sliplining between two pits, all existing lateral connection pipes were reconnected from the 75-inch

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sewer to the newly installed 66-inch pipe, and the two ends of the annular space of the reach were bulk-headed to take pressure before the grout injection. When the distance between the two pits was lengthy, the reach was divided into two or three sections by installing intermediate bulkheads for stage grouting. Grout injection ports and exhaust vents were provided with shut-off valves for each stage of the grouting operation. Once the grouting started, the injected grout pushes out and replaces the water in the annular space. The grout injections were required to continue uninterrupted until the vent (exhausted, flushed or wasted) grout had achieved the density (+/-15%), the viscosity (+/15%), and the approximate color of fresh annular grout being injected. At that time, it was left at the Contractors discretion to take compressive test cylinders and close the exhaust valve or continue the injection to further improve the installed grout quality. Four (4) grout samples were taken to obtain the 24-hour and 3-day strength results by an independent testing laboratory and two grout samples were taken to obtain the 28-day strength results from the City Standards Laboratory. The specification required that at 28 days, the grout sampled from exhaust ports must attain 500 psi. There were a total of 11 reaches where separate grout samples were taken and the 28day test average strength came in at 592 psi. PIT, ACCESS, TRAFFIC, and PUBLIC RELATIONS The North Outfall Sewer is older than the most of the present developments in the area, and many houses and businesses have been built over the sewer. To avoid disturbing the existing developments, extra effort was put in to determine proper locations of sewer access pits. The sewer access pits were constructed at the middle of major streets, at street intersections, and across local streets. The pits were 15 feet wide and average 15 feet deep with various lengths of 16 feet, 20 feet, 32 feet or 75 feet and they created severe traffic impacts. At major streets and intersections, the pits were built in such a way that traffic detours could be installed to open at least one lane in each direction for traffic. However, at local streets, the construction of the pits resulted in complete closure of entire streets and some private driveways. Due to the impacts to the vehicular traffic and pedestrian access to and from the adjacent houses and businesses, the City decided to adopt an extensive public relations plan implemented during the design and construction phases. The plan included hiring of a public relations officer, hiring a full time concierge service personnel, explaining the project through various community meetings, and increased communications with the council offices, individual residents and businesses. The plan also included mailing out 28,000 post cards to the surrounding communities to warn about upcoming construction and traffic disruptions at the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. and Crenshaw Blvd. which is a major street intersection. The public relations officer was assigned as the main public contact through the emergency phone number provided for the project. The officer took the public complaints and communicated with the Engineer, the Inspector, and Council office to resolve them in a timely manner. Also, she notified the impacted individual residents and businesses whenever they were going to be impacted by the installation of traffic detours and extended work at nights and weekends. She also notified the surrounding neighbors about newly scheduled work that may cause odor, noise, and access restrictions. She hand delivered 23 separate notices to the residences and businesses with the help of the engineers and the inspector during construction.

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The full time concierge service personnel was hired for the project when the construction phase reached at Pit No.7 and Pit No.8. These two pit constructions required complete closure of local streets and pedestrian traffic. In addition, at Pit No.7, private house driveways had to be rerouted to accommodate the pit and construction activities. This impacted not only access to their homes but mail delivery, garbage pick-up and other services. Due to these impacts, the concierge service provided assistance to the residents in trash pick ups, mail services, special deliveries and any other special needs during the working hours of construction. He also worked with local junior high school students who had previously traveled heavily through the completely closed street at Pit No.8 and advise them of a safer alternate route that avoided the construction. There were many active community organizations in the Crenshaw district and the project management team attended many different community meetings. During the design, the design team attended two community meetings and explained the project and its expected construction schedules and impacts. During the construction, the construction management team attended a total of six community meetings, council office meetings, and school meetings. Also, the Contractor was required to attend and participate in up to eight community meetings during construction. As a result of the extensive public relations plan, the project was very successful in dealing with the public and resulted in very few complaints from the public during construction. In a public meeting during the last phase of the project, the attendees thanked the City for communicating well with the community. ODOR CONTROL MEASURES The City had determined that proper odor control was very important during construction due to bad odor experiences in a previous sliplining project and reports of numerous odor complaints in the area before the start of the project. The City provided three (3) odor control scrubbers to the contractor to operate and maintain during construction. In addition, two odor control chemical injection facilities were required to be constructed and operated. A full time industrial hygienist was hired to monitor H2S concentration levels around all access to the sewers and at the odor control scrubbers to verify that the odor control plan was effective and working. Odor Control Scrubber The City provided three (3) 5,000 CFM odor control scrubbers to the Contractor to install and operate 24 hours per day, 7 days per week when the existing sewers were opened to air in the pits. Two (2) scrubbers were connected to the existing 75-inch sewer upstream of Pit No.1 and the other scrubber was connected to the sewer between Pit No.8 and Pit No.9. The scrubbers pulled the free air in the existing sewer and created negative pressures in the pits where the sewer was exposed. The carbon in the scrubbers was required to be replaced when the H2S level reaches above 100 ppb (parts per billion) at the exhaust. The typical H2S level periodic readings at the scrubber exhausts were around 5 ppb. Chemical Injection Facility Two chemical injection facilities were provided to reduce the hydrogen sulfide concentration in the sewer gas stream to less than 20 ppm (parts per million). The

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facilities were installed to inject 50 percent by weight active hydrogen peroxide solution to the two main upstream sewer branches each at about one (1) mile distance from Pit No.1. The injection was in operation 24 hours per day, seven days per week and all times during construction. The subcontractor, Vulcan Performance Chemical, for chemical injection profiled the sulfide content for 24 hour period every three months at each inlet where the hydrogen peroxide was injected to optimize the dosage while maintaining less than 20 ppm concentration at the project downstream limit. The existing gas stream had an estimated peak hydrogen sulfide concentration of 120 ppm. One upstream main sewer branch from the north had an estimated peak daily dry weather flow rate of 20 cubic feet per second (cfs) and an estimated peak dissolved sulfide concentration of 1.2 mg/l. The other upstream main sewer branch from the south had 55 cfs flow and 2.9 mg/l of dissolved sulfide concentration. After extensive field testing and monitoring, the chemical subcontractor, determined that the total optimal hydrogen peroxide solution injection volume was between 400 and 500 gallons per day. However, during the hot summer days, the injection volume was increased up to 700 gallons per day. This increase in volume was a result of the increase in H2S level due to the increase in biological activities in the sewer on hot days. Industrial Hygienist and Air Monitoring A full time industrial hygienist, who had experiences in air monitoring and was certified by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene, was hired to monitor air for odor (H2S level). The hygienist monitored the sewer air stream and the ambient air at work-site perimeter fence lines, adjacent property lines within 100 feet of the work site, and of all operating air scrubbing unit discharges. The data were logged at least once each and every hour at each work site where work was in progress and sewage exposed to the atmosphere. All but very few of the H2S data collected during construction were below 20 ppb which was the required level during construction. Outcome of Odor Control The odor control system provided under this project worked exceptionally well. The combination of chemical injection and odor control scrubbers maintained H2S below levels that were offensive or of a nuisance. During construction, we did not receive any serious odor complaints related to the project. However, we did receive some odor complaints around Pit No.7 and Pit No.8 after the odor control scrubber facilities and the chemical injection facilities were shutdown at the end of the project. Odor problems that had existed before the construction project returned when the odor control for construction was stopped. Installing an inner cover below the newly installed maintenance hole cover mitigated the odor problem. LIVE SEWER REALIGNMENT One section of the existing 75-inch sewer to be repaired was a 36 degree bend and was located adjacent to an existing building foundation. During the design, it was decided not to slipline the sewer section due to the difficulty of pushing the rigid pipes into the bend. Also, the existing foundation prevented excavation to expose the sewer for lining from the top. The alternate solution was to abandon the bend by realigning the section by installing a bypass line with construction of two (2) pre-fabricated flow diversion structures. (See Figure 3 below)

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Bypass Line and Diversion Structures Figure 3 This work required the construction of water tight reinforced concrete box structures (flow diversion structure, 15 feet wide by 19 feet long and the bottom slab was about 23 feet below the ground elevation) all around the existing 75-inch sewer at two pit locations where the bypass line would be connected. While the construction of the box structures was on going, the concrete insert structures were being formed and pre-casted nearby the pits. All inner surfaces of the box and insert structures were installed with PVC liner to protect the concrete surfaces from sewer gases. Also, a 66-inch bypass line was installed connecting the diversion structures. After the completion of the diversion structures and the bypass line installation, a diamond blade wire saw cutter was used to cut the two ends of the 75-inch sewer segment within the diversion structures. During the saw cutting, the sewer segments were supported from the bottom. The saw cut segments of the sewer were removed from the diversion structures and the precast concrete insert structures were lowered into the diversion structure, diverting the flow to the new bypass line. The top of the diversion structure was closed with a concrete slab attached with a maintenance hole. The whole operation was a lengthy process and it took about four (4) months to complete from the initial excavation to construction of the bypass line and to the final backfill of the pits. However, all of the actual saw cutting and removal of a 75-inch sewer segment and installing a new insert in the diversion structure took less than 24 hours to complete, minimizing the exposure of sewer to the atmosphere. It was a very clean and successful operation, which resulted in realignment of an existing live 75-inch sewer without spilling or backup of the sewer flow, with no odor problems, and with very few public complaints.

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CONCLUSION The main objective of the project was to successfully rehabilitate the existing badly deteriorated 75-inch sewer with minimal impacts on public access, odor, and traffic to the surrounding community. Those objectives were successfully met by carefully selecting and implementing the appropriate method of construction, adequate odor control measures, and extensive public relations plans. The above details of the implemented construction criteria, construction method, access and traffic control measures, public relations efforts, odor control measures, and the live sewer alignment method may be used as a reference for any future public sewer rehabilitation projects.