Serving nearly 1.8 million residents and maintaining more than 5,500 miles of fresh water pipeline and nearly 5,400 miles of sewer pipeline in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., Washington Suburban Sanitary Sewer Commission (WSSC) is the eighth largest water and wastewater utility in the nation.
With the congested population and affluent neighborhoods in its service area, the WSSC is constantly looking for new ways to minimize disturbance to traffic and private residences during water and sewer main maintenance. The traditional open-trench method of replacing water and sewer pipe in urban and suburban areas often tears up landscaping, uproots trees, blocks driveway access and sometimes forces the closure of multiple traffic lanes on busy roads. It was factors like these that drew the WSSC to the less-invasive trenchless pipe replacement method of pipe bursting a few yearsago.