It's a service to the community," Bhenam says. "The pay is not that bad. I get to work with a great bunch of guys," he says as one man leans from inside the bright yellow backhoe smiling and yelling some inside joke to Bhenam, his boss.

A soft-spoken, humble type, Bhenam works in the dangerous, often wet world of water-main maintenance. He immigrated to the United States from Iran in 1977, when he was 19 years old. After graduating in 1983 from New Jersey Technical Institute, he began consulting on repair projects for the city of New York.

Today he works for Todino Sewer & Water Service Inc., a Bronx-based private contractor, and lives with his wife and three children in Staten Island. He says the best part of being a water-main break worker is the on-the-job male bonding.

This week, the men ripped up a stretch of street at 125th Street and 12th Avenue to replace 200 feet of 60-year-old tubing. The project will cost the city roughly $30,000, but many water-main breaks cost much more. The Todino company's average projects run about $2 million.

Water-main breaks are more common in a city like New York because its piping, like its subways, is older.

They are also more likely in the winter months when freezing causes the pipes to expand and crack. Mains, like legs, have joints, and sometimes their bolts just go loose, often unleashing muddy rivers that flow onto the streets of the U.S.'s largest metropolis.

After fixing the break, the men begin to fill the space around the pipe with dirt and ready themselves for the weekend. Water-main breaks are also caused when too little dirt, or "backfill," is poured around the pipes once they are fixed. As a result, after they are covered, the mains can begin to sag into the pockets of air.

They could fall apart at any time," says Ray Cestaro, 38, a supervisor for underground projects for the city. "It's an older city."

There are about 40 to 50 water-main projects going on in New York City on any given week, Bhenam says. They are contracted out by the city's Department of Design Construction to private companies like Todino, where Bhenam and Cancel work.

The companies bid for the contracts in each of New York's five boroughs. The winning bidders are on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for when those kind of breaks "you hear about on 1010 WINS," actually go down, Cestaro says.

E

Home | 1