Description: There is a focus for river restoration and dam removals. There are a lot of times where utilities are crossing or right up in the river and we must protect them. The needed us to do a very complicated job in the middle of a river. The customer needed to find a gas line, however it’s in a creek and hard to locate it in the water and buried under sediment.

Location: The site location was in Easton, PA in a creek. There was also a 25-foot drop for our technicians to get down to the water. There was a dam right down here and if we going to remove it, there is going to be sediment moving in the stream channel can drop in elevation. If it drops in elevation it has the potential to expose that gas line. So, we need to know exactly what elevation it is at so we can survey it in. The only way to survey it in is to do hydro vac to be able to see it and put a survey rod on.

Solutions: The customer wanted to know if we could do a soft dig in the river dealing with a coffer dam and river control. We needed to get the water out in order to do the dig. We needed to use our Hydro Truck, Aqua Dam, and harness to get down the creek. We put the dam in and removed the water from there and then we were able to dig the hole to locate the line.

How did the customer benefit from the solution? We were able to expose the gas line after we did a soft dig. Once we establish the elevation of the gas line, then we can write that down into our designs. We can design stabilization or protection of it in the river using all grade control structure or rock scour protection, but we can’t design that with any sort of definition without knowing exactly where the line is in the riverbank.

• "We were desperate to find a good firm like Master Locators to come out and do a complicated dig in the river. We were very pleased with the hard work your team did on the job”
• - Paul Woodworth, Fluvial Geomorphologist of Princeton Hydro