Twin water lines hit in union center

[pepelect]

While trenching the hardest rock on the face of the planet this week we had a event.   Trenching along with the old dirt toothed ditch witch we hit a slight harder substance.  After a trip back to HQ for a bigger 115hp rock saw trencher we were moving at an earth shattering pace of fifteen feet an hour.   At the point of going postal we hit a small damp place.  Then a little farther down line we sliced through two buried steel lines that Moses had on the arc a while back.   All of a sudden the water starts coming infiltrating the trench from both directions coming out of both the uphill and downhill side of the pipes.  How that much water was still in such ancient rusty pipe is beyond me.     Flashbacks of one hundred pair phone cables, lawsuits, one call issues later we realized through a member of the family with let's say a more senior experience profile stated that what we hit was part of a twin water line that was installed many many years ago to get water from the elk river inlet ( this is about six miles west of Howard) through ten or so miles of the hardest rock known to mankind to the top of the hill( where the current wind farm is being constructed) to provide water for either a steam engine or steam pump.  What I want to know is if any one knows if this water fed a steam engined wheel for the group rod driven pump jacks or if there was once a pump to get the product of the power house down stream to the oil tank south west of Howard.  The power was still operating with a gas engine in the seventies as I remember being amazed at the engineering of running so many pump jacks off one power source.  If anyone can remember I am just curious.

The trench is finally complete with no water leaks.  Rural water is way better than hauling.

[flintauqua]

Could the water been for a different purpose?

http://www.kgs.ku.edu/General/Geology/Elk/03_mine2.html

The Longton field is the only other major field in Elk County to which secondary recovery methods have been applied. Commencing in 1947, fresh water from shallow wells was injected into the "Longton" shallow sand at a depth of 570 feet. On several other smaller fields pilot water-flood studies have been made. As of January 1, 1956, no secondary recovery operations were reported in the county.

The calculated water-flood reserves as of January 1, 1948, were more than 1,860,000 barrels of oil (Sweeney, 1949, p. 11).