Joe Crupi spent a recent morning standing between two sites where several long trenches had been dug to make way for installing part of the water distribution system to the Manhattan leg of Water Tunnel No. 3. Within one of the trenches, tangles of rusted pipes had already been lifted over wooden crossbeams and moved aside to make way for a new 48-in.-dia trunk main below. On this particular section of the project on this particular summer day, some of the old-pipe relocation work was done; crews were navigating the rest of the job.
Crupi, who is Upper Manhattan construction director at New York City's Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC), smiled wryly as he looked at the congested highway of private utility, electric, gas, cable TV, water and steam pipes and ducts in the city's underbelly. "This is what we find when we open up the streets. As you can see, there is no room for a 48-inch-diameter pipe," he said loud enough to be heard over the honking horns and screeching brakes of heavy traffic on 10th Avenue, which this project abuts. But he smiled again and added that below the pipe infrastructure "it looks like they made room."