Iron planet at surface, mantle, core and sewers

Cast iron replaced by newer pieces 5/2023 zip code 49505

 Normally these sturdy pieces of cast iron sit quietly out of sight in the ground and under the road surface. But for this fundamental rebuilding of the sewer line a few miles north of downtown Grand Rapids, one section at a time, the old pieces come out and the new ones go in. Thinking about the foundry products in the widest possible frame, it is worth seeing this collection from its source to its final destination. The service life between installation a few generations ago and just now being removed from service is only a small part of this iron's long life.

Going back to the formation of planet Earth and the circumstances that led to this iron ending up in iron ore that was close enough to the surface for humans with their mining gear to extract it, this life story can begin from those mines perhaps 50 or 100 years ago; very possible from the Mesabi (Missabi) Iron Range around Duluth, Minnesota or the iron ore sources in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Trucks moved the ore to crush it to sizes suitable for rail travel to the lakeshore loading ports where waiting ore carriers hundreds of feet long took on the ore and delivered it to mills where iron could be separated from the rock; maybe Gary, Indiana or Cleveland, Ohio, for example. Depending on market prices and customer requirements the newly pooled iron could go to one of several processes to end up for use in cast-iron, steel sheets, rods, beams, or thinly rolled form. The pieces in this photo all are cast-iron products of specialty foundries like the ones at Neenah, Wisconsin and East Jordan Iron Works (EJIW) in northwest Lower Michigan.

Local governments will order cast-iron pieces for sewer lines and water supply to create and maintain their infrastructure and basic services. Accidents, upgrades and newer technology, and wear and tear of age all lead to the retirement of the old pieces with new replacements, as shown in this example. Thanks to a profitable market for certain scrap metals, it is probable that one or two years from now these old pieces will be reborn as another type of cast-iron fixture. The energy to mine, crush, transport, smelt, do business, and arrange delivery to final user is many times more expensive than to bypass the first steps and begin from smelting, foundry, and delivery. Of course, each municipality is different: some may take this heap directly to the scrap buyer or foundry operations. Others may wait to fill a railcar or two before transacting the sale. For small towns, it could be that heaps are built up for many years before they look for a rising market price to sell their scrap. So without knowing the details in this city, it is hard to predict where these pieces go next, where they end up in a few years, and how long this cycle of use and recycling for recasting (reuse) goes on into the future. But as long as this kind of civilization with sanitary treatment of wastewater and door to door supply of clean water continues, there is no reason to think that iron will not be in demand over and over again, century after century.

In the case of ghost towns, evacuated disaster sites, and other catastrophic situations, though, the pieces of cast-iron in the ground may well remain untouched and unused indefinitely. Fast forwarding thousands of years, if there is moisture and oxygen in the surrounding soil then the process of rusting eventually will turn the solid forms into flaking particles, not bound into ore but still distributed in the soil structure as an orange or reddish coloration in the ground. Thus, there are many story arcs for iron present at the Earth's origins and once mined then fashioned into useful products to be used, scrapped and remade anew again and again, except in a few cases when the structures are abandoned. The ones in this picture, though, seem likely to go to a fiery future to be remade by the foundry into somebody else's infrastructure taken for granted in daily use.

Roadwork today versus Roman Empire times

 

Sewer line replacement: road surface cut, 8-inch cast-iron pipe, fire-plug replacements [zip 49505]

Even 2000 years later much of the built landscape from Roman times can be seen in its original location, sometimes still functioning as road, bridge, aqueduct, retaining wall, or other engineering purpose. Other times the original structure is disassembled and pieces of stone end up in buildings of other centuries. Basic infrastructure like clean water supply and sewer removal of waste, efficient stormwater redirection, sturdy bridge and port facilities, and long-distance, durable road surfaces have stood the test of time. So for a person of that era to visit 2023 would be endlessly fascinating, no doubt, both for our tools and processes, but also to see how much has NOT changed in human needs and infrastructure functions.

Obviously, the petroleum powered machines, the vast amount of specialized steel found in many parts of the pipes, the equipment, and the non-power tools, as well, would amaze them. Image - a self-propelled vehicle. And the laying of hard road surfaces (and removing them) atop a roadbed that is more or less the same design as Roman Times would capture their attention, too. Maybe most amazing of all is the relatively small crew performing these tasks with the aid of massive machinery and fossil fuel engines (and plastics and other products coming out of petroleum). For ancient Romans to excavate sewer (or water) lines, replace pipes, then rebuild the roadbed and cover it with a hard surface would take hundreds of workers (slave or paid or corvee labor commandeered) and many more weeks than it does for the team of workers in 2023.

People speeding past in their modern, high-powered cars with windows up and air-conditioning or heating adding comfort to the trip, maybe entertained by radio or another medium, hardly think twice about road construction projects during the work season of March to November. But what goes unnoticed or taken for granted perhaps is equally important as the other things taken for granted, too: air, water, food, shelter, and so on.