Drinking Straws, Archimedes, and Tax Dollars.

I live on Kendall Avenue, not far from the Middle School. For the last two months, our tax dollars have been at work with the Belden Construction company, which has been separating the stormwater system and the sewer system.

The new stormwater pipes are glories of modern technology. They are made of plastic – probably recycled pop bottles. They are light and huge. The diameter of the tubes is over 40 inches. But they are light enough for two men to lift and carry. The design is such that they have ribs on the outside of these giant pipes. The ridges add strength and probably are filled with air or gas. That means that when they're covered with the sand, soil, or rock that they won't collapse—a very innovative design.

The project started in front of the middle school and crept up Kendall Avenue, where they have dug up our sidewalks down to a level of about 5 to 6 feet deep.

Then they added a layer of crushed rock onto which they lay these giant pipes. I have been told that the crushed stone acts like a "French Drain" and that stormwater which is not captured in the system and flowing through the pipes, may flow around the tube underground. Then it will be carried away because the pipes and rock angle down towards a big collecting area.

When I step back and look at these massive pipes, they remind me of giant plastic drinking straws.

It's almost as if we have 1/4 of a mile of 40-inch diameter giant plastic drinking straws running underground about 6-feet down. The difference between these giant drinking straws and the standard concrete pipes usually used for stormwater carriage is remarkable.

They are much, much  lighter, less costly, and, as I said, able to be handled and connected by a smaller crew than those other giant concrete pipes. So, tax payers must be saving money! Saving tax dollars!

But it all leaves me wondering. With 40-inch pipes, somebody is expecting a lot of water! After all, this is northern New England, and hurricane season is just starting. I watch the morning weather reports and see those tropical water/cloud storm systems forming and churning around down by Africa and heading towards the Caribbean.

I know that their track is north, up the East Coast! We catch more than a few of them up here in Vermont, dumping buckets and buckets of rain.

My house on Kendall is lower than the land behind me on Burnham Avenue. When those floods come, all those properties drain onto my property and then towards the front of my house on Kendall Avenue. I try to help that stormwater move into the street at Kendall Ave.

All of the water that comes down my driveway and out my gutters flows into the street. And the construction crew has patiently explained that this is precisely why they're putting in these massive big stormwater pipes to carry a tremendous amount of water away.

If I’m not wondering about giant drinking straws, I wonder about Archimedes.

A few years ago, we had a mighty hurricane come up the east coast – Hurricane Irene - and some of our friends were farming/gardening not far from here.

The Archimedes Effect befell their farm - all subterranean rocks hidden under their fields “floated” to the surface. So many stones which were so heavy that they couldn't be cleared, leaving the land useless for working as a garden. That's the Archimedes effect. It makes everything underground float upward.

That leaves me wondering about what's going to happen when a hurricane hits Kendall Ave.  Much of the surface water will go into the new stormwater system and flow into those massive new pipes, I'm sure.

But there may be more water, which runs underground and into the rock beneath those giant underground drinking straws. And, after a few years, will that stone sink into the clay and no longer be a drain of any sort? Will the water cease to flow?

I wonder what the force of the lift the Archimedes Effect will have on those, light, plastic giant drinking straw pipes beneath Kendall Ave? Those straws are in no way anchored to anything underground – just placed there.

The power of a flood and flowing water in the pipes is nothing to be trifled with. Forty inches of storm water in the pipes flowing, and forty inches below the pipes lifting. Could we wind up with brand-new giant pieces of sidewalk blown apart because the pipes are rising, breaking apart at their joints like plastic drinking straws?

After that, where does all the freed stormwater go?

Stay tuned. This is the first of many hurricane seasons.

Ah, for the simple joys of concrete! Maybe that’s why the Pharos built their pyramids out of concrete and not pop bottles …or am I thinking about asphalt?