PROVO — Heavy machinery is being used at Point of the Mountain on both sides of I-15 for a very complicated construction project directly below the freeway.

The construction is part of a $150 million pipeline that will completely enclose what is now an open canal.

The 21-mile canal was built in 1911 to carry water from the Provo River to irrigators and municipalities in Salt Lake County. It was enlarged in the 1940s. Officially, it is named the Provo Reservoir Canal, but for people living nearby, it's always been known as the Murdock Canal.

It would be a major mess and extremely expensive to dig up the freeway and put in a new pipe, so crews are reinforcing the existing water tunnel with steel.

Construction consists of installing a steel liner in the existing 96-inch diameter steel pipe under I-15 and connecting to new 120-inch diameter steel pipe sections on both sides of the freeway.

"This will have a lining of steel placed in it so it can carry more water and hold more pressure than the system could before," said Steve Cain, facilities and lands manager for the Provo River Water Users Association. "The difficult thing is to slip in the sections of steel inside the concrete pipe and do that safely."

Workers are using a trick to get the steel pipe to fit into the cement.

"The contractor has a system of taking these sections of pipe that are curled together and slipping them inside the pipe," Cain said. "Then they open them up and weld them in place.”

The work happening under the freeway is moving fast. It should be wrapped up in less than a month.

"We do not anticipate impacting I-15 traffic, but we want to let motorists know what activity is occurring in the area," Cain said.

The project to turn the Murdock canal into a safer and more efficient pipeline is 80 percent complete. This work is required to handle the increased water pressure and provide additional water capacity for the rapidly growing populations in Salt Lake and Utah counties.

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When it's completed, the enclosed canal will become a nonmotorized trail for joggers, bicyclists and equestrian use.

"We have about 18 miles of 21 miles of pipe installed already," Cain said. "We should be done with all the main line pipe … by March and have the pipe in service by May 1."

That's when the water will start flowing through the canal again. Most of the construction work has to happen during the fall and winter because the water has to keep flowing during the spring and summer.

E-mail: spenrod@ksl.com

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