Dozens of people lined the street. Up and down Euclid Avenue, less than a mile from Miami’s famous South Beach, crowds were forming. With camera phones at the ready, they watched a 54-inch high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe readied and pulled underground. ISCO Industries’ sales rep Bryan Fletcher had been working for months with the contractor on the job to provide HDPE, equipment, and field technicians to make this incredible job a reality. Most onlookers had no idea what exactly they were watching, but each one of them could tell it was something remarkable. And it was. In fact, it was record-breaking.
It was the culmination of years of work. In 2013, the City of Miami Beach conducted a condition assessment on the existing 54-inch sanitary sewage force main conveying sewage through the city of Miami Beach to the county wastewater treatment plant in Virginia Key. They discovered evidence that after years of satisfactory service, the sole pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipe (PCCP) sanitary main serving the City was deteriorated and potentially at risk of failure due to “Hydrogen embrittlement.”