Thats funny, sort of a small world, Mark was with Design and Construction, field orientated, this project was probably convenient given the location, and where he was from, he probably worked on most of the northern facilities or within the regions up there.
Bare Hill, and or Bare Hill road, I was there for the water tower erecting, you know when they painted it in October of '98, the ladybugs came out, it was a nice sunny and warm October day, seems like all of them stuck to that paint ! I think I have an aerial photo of all the tank pieces staged around the base.
Must have been a water main with debris in the line or sections before they charged it up, sanitized then flushed.
I recall another pipeline, the force sewer main, between Upstate, and the other facility, (there were 2 others besides the newest and 3rd one) I forget which is which, both were medium security, if I recall. The force main went between the east facility, east side of bare hill road, and upstate. I inspected every manhole and closed 2 valves on each end to safeguard against an accidental backfeed on the upstate CF end until we were ready to commission the new system on our end. The site contractor was from right here in town where I live here outside of Troy top notch outfit too, they did an excellent job and afforded us a month of float time as they completed their work rapidly throughout the entire project. I had to sign off on their work, and part of it was inspecting every single manhole, 175 of those + another 12 or so on the force main, I've been in every single one, the laborer from the site contractor was with me ready to address any punch list items and he was in one of those force main manholes with no ventilation like from a gravity system, open pipe, he almost blacked out, I had grabbed his hand and forearm and helped him get out, confined space, he recognized the danger soon enough thankfully, but they should have had safety equipment for both of us.
There was not a heck of a lot of things to do around there, we used to go to "The Pines" for lunch, and other local places, tried a little bowling, but there was so much cigarette smoke I ended up with nosebleeds and some of the worst sinus problems I've ever had. Once in awhile guys from the team would go to Montreal, or the new casino nearby, or to a gym near the reservation. I used to like stopping in at the lake titus brewery down 30 a ways and the Tamarack Inn which I think burned down. There was a small ski slope nearby we used to ski there midweek when the snow was good.
