Brown bears are having a nightly free-for-all along Lily Lake Road, where Southeast Roadbuilders is replacing the water line that connects the lake to the borough treatment plant on FAA Road.
“There’s a sow with two cubs, a couple juveniles and a big, old boar. I don’t know who the culprit bears are, but they’ve wreaked havoc on things up there. It’s become a bear playground,” said project superintendent Ralph Vigilante. “At first it was funny, but it’s become burdensome.”
Since the project started in late July, bears have chewed the ends of pipe flanges, eaten a case of caulking and most of a box of flange gaskets, pulled out a vertical drain pipe and chewed the wires out of a pipe-welding machine.
“The coil wire, the spark plug wire, the battery cables, they’re completely gone. They’re in a pile of bear crap somewhere,” Vigilante said.
There were 200, 50-foot sections of 10-inch pipe laid out for the two-mile long project, about half of which crews have buried. “There’s not a stick of pipe that doesn’t have a bear footprint on it,” Vigilante said.
In some places, bears have rolled around 20-foot sections of culvert, he said. “They’ve rolled them 250 feet from where they go. They must be in full play mode.”
The bears scatter each morning and haven’t been a safety issue for workers, he said, although they occasionally hear crashing through the brush.
Vigilante suspects the bears include ones that have gotten into the landfill nearby. “It’s just a bear highway out there and they’re accustomed to going through trash. They think our stuff is garbage.
The line was charged with water Aug.25 and should be completely buried by mid-September. Work rebuilding the road – which the line runs under, in places – may continue beyond that date. The project cost is $712,000.