Laying cable isn't always a free-flowing expedition It's not a bucket truck. So what's the monster pipe attached to the hydraulic lift assembly? The tank holds 6 tons of - water and dirt! City utilities know these machines. A vacuum cleaner for sewers. The sucker truck. And a fine no-damage hole-digger. I'd been observing a city crew replacing all the lateral valves on a major trunk water line. One week per intersection. Each has three - sometimes four - valves. Suckered into it This is big stuff. Each hole is 8 feet wide, 12 feet long and 8 feet deep. Big back-hoes and dump trucks. When they come to the blaze of visible orange, red and white paint over lawns, curbs and streets, it portends serious digging. It would help to know how deep those buried lines really are. Experience has shown Qwest and power company marking contractors often are off the mark as to the location of buried cable. City crews tell me that it's not uncommon to find the cable up to 5 feet from the painted line! But, where lines are buried, that big sucker truck pays for itself. First what looks like an air hose is unreeled. High-pressure water is aimed to open the dirt. Then the boom assembly is positioned such that a 9-inch flexible pipe mouth is positioned to suck the dirt into the tank. PVC water lines are broken and spliced later. The resulting hole has straight sides and flat bottoms. Utility lines are exposed with zero damage. However, city troops get angry at the cost and time of using this truck when not needed. Grumbling 'cause the crummy utility can't mark its cables correctly - suggests we get our act together. Even if the contractor pays for its mistake, the aggravation and lost service isn't worth it. Uranium fever Is the name of a book about mining in 1950 southeast Utah. I liked the part about Vernon Pick who said he got lost prospecting for uranium in Utah badlands called the San Rafael Swell. Its 900 square miles is drained - when it rains two or three times a year - into the Muddy Creek. The channel has, over eons of time, sawed its way out of the Swell. Pick had staked a rich lode of uranium where the Muddy exits the Swell. Only got out alive 'cause he built a raft to float to Hanksville. Dry humor Yeah. Right. It's hard to find locals who have seen the Muddy stream bed with enough water to stop a motor bike using it as a road - let alone float a raft. And, there are no trees in the swell. But the high-grade uranium was real. The claim sold for $9 mil and "Life" magazine (November 1954) got conned by Pick's tales. Turned out the ore was too costly to mine. Interesting descriptions of the country east of Hanksville is at: http://www.psnw.com/~bashford/desert.html. Mindy at wayoutwesttours.com collects historical stuff of the area. Riverbed plowing There is a real river (for Utah) that joins the Muddy at Hanksville. Name is Fremont. It flows year 'round. Fall and winter flow is small. A person can walk through most any part of the main bed, and the meander channel is mostly hundreds of feet wide - bare, dry ground with gravel and scrub vegetation that sees heavy water during spring run-off. Both streambeds wander through badlands of slick rock and sand. Utah State Highway 24 parallels the Fremont. One side of that road is mostly carved through sandstone or fill adjacent to the riverbed. For all practical purposes it is impossible to plow a cable adjacent to this road. Permits to go overland are denied outright. Yet, the locals think a cable could be laid unbroken, into the 12 miles of the riverbed being considered for a project. All believe that the cable, properly buried, would never be a problem. Plow a cable down a mostly dry river bed? The State Division of Water Rights holds otherwise. Like, because it's never been done, it ain't gonna start here. Copyright 2002 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © Beehive Telephone Co.