But again repairing this line shouldn't be too major of an expense, and if you destroyed a long section and it essentially needs replaced - well whoever was operating the excavation equipment should have stopped long before destroying that much and re-assessed the situation.
that was pretty much my thought.....
when i was a first year muppet, my employer chalked out a ton
of underground, and brought in a 12" bucket wheel to get the
job done right..... whoo hoo.... down went the wheel, and away
the guy went... late 70's, and dig alert was not called... not sure
if dig alert was in force the way it is now, even.
there was an 8" fire main..... and it was encased in concrete no less..
so the guy just left the wheel down, until it chewed thru the concrete
and broke the main....
it was after about a week of trenching, and we were hot on his tail
all that time running pvc.... and when he broke it, nobody knew
where there was a shutoff at... turns out there was more than one
to isolate the line... it ran for about 5 hours... flooded every ditch,
all the 4" pvc floated up to the top, the ditches caved in, and the
pvc sank back eventually down into the mud.
contractor went broke that day. it took a few months for that to
be fully realized, but it cost him his business.... the thing i remember
being told, was that if the only thing i learned in my apprenticeship,
was how to put underground in without screwing up the job, i
would have learned something a lot of folks don't know.