In February 1922, the Chesterton Tribune broke a double-barreled news story of historic significance: The Chesterton China Factory had begun making porcelain, and the Chesterton Town Board had engaged the services of South Bend engineer Charles W. Cole to design a sanitary sewer capable of serving the new manufacture.
Cole’s plans were ambitious:
*The septic tank installed in Coffee Creek off East Porter Ave. would be decommissioned.
*The flow of sewage into Coffee Creek would be reversed to run west instead of east as far as Fourth or Fifth Street.
*The flow would then jog north and west to Waverly Road and then finally north all the way to its destination: The Little Calumet River.
That, at any rate, was Cole’s idea. However, as The Tribune hastened to add, “It may be found that the plan will not be at all practical. Grades may be such as to make the idea impractical but at any rate it will be investigated.”
It’s unclear what the surveys did show, if surveys were ever actually conducted, because property owners, led by A.J. Bowser, publisher of The Chesterton Tribune, objected to paying the assessment to fund the sewer. A petition was filed against the sewer project, then a lawsuit, then an appeal. At some point—the public record is vague—the Chesterton Town Board evidently abandoned the project altogether. More than five years later, in December 1927, The Trib reported, “Some years ago the town attempted to build a sewer system that would have prevented these conditions”—flooded basements on the west side of town—“but remonstrances filed against the plan defeated the project.”
By that time, the Chesterton China Factory—the impetus for extending sanitary service in the first place—had been out of business for two years.
Finally, in May 1929, the clamor of West Siders sick of flooded basements lit a fire under the Chesterton Town Board, which agreed to try it all over again, this time with a new design by Engineer Cole which would run the sewer main north along Eighth Street from West Porter Ave. The Town Board formally adopted a resolution to that effect, duly notified the Porter Circuit Court of its intention, and immediately faced renewed legal opposition: Not, on this occasion, by local property owners but by the New York Central and Pere Marquette railroads, beneath whose respective sets of tracks the main would have to be laid on its way north to the Little Calumet River.
Another court battle ensued, including a change of venue to LaPorte County and a series of continuances, and not until April 1930 was the case at last settled, following assurances to the NYC and Pere Marquette that the sewer project would cause “no interference with the operation of their trains,” as The Trib reported.
In August 1930, The Trib was pleased to announce that actual digging had commenced, under the headline “YES, IT’S TRUE; WORK ON SEWER HAS BEGUN”: “Wednesday the work was started at the lower end of the sewer on the south bank of the Little Calumet River near the Michigan Central bridge.”
Here’s the funny thing: We know this vexed history of the 48-inch Eighth Street trunk line mostly because The Trib reported it. In the Town of Chesterton’s official archives one finds few references to the project and those are typically cryptic and gnomic, as Town Engineer Mark O’Dell, Assistant Building Commissioner Alex Vode, and Building Officials Dave Lohse and Nate Williams have discovered over the last month or so.
As O’Dell told the Utility Service Board at its meeting Monday, Feb. 17, the four of them have been seeking documentation of whatever arrangements the Town of Chesterton might have had with the railroads prior to breaking ground on the 48-incher, as the Utility prepares 95 years later to re-line it. More specifically, they’ve been seeking such documentation at the request of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has awarded the Utility a $1 million grant for the project.
“I’ve been going through these ancient books trying to find anything about the railroad, O’Dell said.”
“You’d think that with all the updates and technology for boring underneath the railroads, it shouldn’t be that big a deal,” Member Scot McCord suggested.
“But it is,” President Larry Brandt acknowledged.
Superintendent Dave Ryan then made a pretty obvious observation, namely, that the boring was done nearly a century ago and the 48-incher has been comfortably in place since then. “We’re already there,” he said. “We’ve just got to pull the plastic pipe inside the concrete.”
