What is underground infrastructure?
Underground infrastructure refers to the network of essential systems buried beneath streets, sidewalks, and homes that keep your community functioning. This typically includes:
- Water systems: drinking water mains and distribution pipes
- Sewer systems: sanitary sewers (wastewater) and storm sewers (rainwater drainage)
- Utilities: natural gas and electric lines, and telecommunications/fiber optic cables
- Other elements: culverts, which are pipes/tunnels that allow water to flow underneath the surface rather than blocking it or forcing it to flow over the top, and stormwater retention systems, which capture and hold rainwater runoff, releasing it slowly or letting it soak into the ground
Because it’s out of sight, people often don’t think about this infrastructure until something goes wrong, like water main breaks, beach closures, or sinkholes.
What do underground infrastructure improvements do?
Improvement projects generally involve:
- Replacing aging pipes and lines that are decades (sometimes over a century) old and prone to failure
- Upsizing sewer capacity to handle growth, increased demand, or heavier rainfall events by increasing pipe diameter.
- Separating combined sewers (where stormwater and sewage share one pipe) into separate systems to reduce overflow risks
- Repairing or relining pipes using techniques like trenchless rehabilitation (which avoids fully digging up streets)
- Upgrading water distribution materials from older materials like cast iron or clay to more durable options like PVC or ductile iron.
- Adding capacity for new utilities, such as fiber optic lines for broadband expansion
Underground infrastructure improvements offer many benefits, including fewer failures and emergencies, such as water main breaks, better water quality, reduced flooding and overflows, and even smoother streets.
Benefits also extend into communities economically, as reliable infrastructure supports property values and attracts business investment.
Spotlight: Leavitt & Starck Sewer Separation Project
Lansing, Michigan, is nearing the finish line on a decades-long program to separate its combined sewer system — one of the most consequential infrastructure efforts underway in Michigan’s capital city today.
The Challenge
Like many Michigan cities, Lansing’s sewer infrastructure was built before the 1950s as a combined system, designed to carry sewage from homes, businesses, and industrial facilities to the wastewater treatment plant via a single network of pipes. Combined systems also collect rain and snowmelt, and during heavy storms, that dual burden can exceed the system’s capacity.
- When capacity is exceeded, overflow discharges directly into rivers, threatening water quality and public health.
- In Lansing’s case, the receiving waters are the Grand and Red Cedar Rivers.
The Westside Project
One segment of this construction is underway in Lansing’s Westside neighborhood, where Leavitt & Starck is contracted to lead the work, and they’re delivering more than sewer improvements. Other aging infrastructure is being addressed in tandem:
- Water mains
- Roads
- Curbs
- Sidewalks
This approach reduces long-term disruption to residents by avoiding repeated excavation of the same streets for separate projects down the road. The new pipes being installed underground carry lifespans ranging from 50 to 100+ years, meaning this work isn’t just fixing today’s problems; it’s setting up the neighborhood’s underground infrastructure for the next century.
Unseen, But Essential
Underground infrastructure rarely gets noticed until something goes wrong. Once construction wraps and the street is repaved, there’s no visible sign of the new pipes running beneath it. But that invisibility doesn’t make the work any less critical.
Clean water, reliable sewer service, and flood protection. These are things people rely on every single day without a second thought — and that’s exactly the point. Good, reliable infrastructure fades into the background.
The Westside project is just one example of this work happening in neighborhoods across Michigan, as cities and communities statewide invest in the aging systems that keep daily life running, largely unnoticed, beneath our feet.
Learn more about the Lansing Combined Sewer Overflow project here.