The deteriorating South Street interceptor sewer near the South Street Seaport in Manhattan’s Financial District had all the makings of a mess.
Located nearly 30 ft below the busy roadway, which itself underlies the FDR Drive viaduct, the 60-year-old concrete walls of the nearly 1,000-ft-long, 8-ft by 6-ft combined sanitary and storm sewer were increasingly vulnerable to infiltration from the adjacent East River, heightening the risk of overflow. While rehabilitation was desperately needed, New York City’s Dept. of Design and Construction recognized that the complexities of such a large project would only magnify inherent disruptive effects of a conventional open-trench repair approach.
