Sep 15, 2014 2 min read

DONORA – A natural gas company has discovered Donora is as tough as steel as it replaces a main pipeline traveling under the Monongahela River.

Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania broke three drill bits when its machinery encountered buried steel or concrete, part of the infrastructure of the former U.S. Steel mill on the Donora side of the river, the company said Monday.

“The project did run into an obstacle under the old mill site,” said company spokesman Scott Waitlevertch.

Columbia is investing $2.6 million to replace the 8-inch line after it began to leak on the Webster side of the river, he said.

The company closed Sixth Street in Donora Industrial Park, where it positioned the drill that is boring a 1,400-feet-long hole to Turkey Hollow Road, which also is closed at Route 906.

It is replacing a steel pipeline serving 340 customers with one made from coated steel and plastic. The new pipe will be attached to the drill at Turkey Hollow Road, then pulled back under the river by the machinery, Waitlevertch said.

He said workers didn’t excavate the obstacles, but opted to drill below them, putting the project slightly off schedule.

The mill used fill to raise the ground level in Donora when the plant was constructed in 1900. The land was converted into an industrial park after the mill closed about 1960.

The Columbia project is the second natural gas pipeline to be installed under the Monongahela River in the Donora area since 2011.

Dominion Resources constructed a new pipeline under the river between Webster and nearby Carroll three years ago as part of the Appalachian Gateway pipeline designed for the booming Marcellus Shale natural gas industry in Washington County.

The Donora project is expected to be completed during the first week of October, and Columbia will spend an additional two weeks in the area repairing roads it damaged while drilling, Waitlevertch said.