To protect the city of Alameda’s water supply from potentially crippling damage during an earthquake, the East Bay Municipal Utility District recently completed a highly complex project: replacing a vulnerable underwater, cast-iron water main with a 3,300-foot-long, high-density polyethylene pipe.The project, which cost $26 million, was completed in January after about a decade of planning. It dramatically improves the resiliency and reliability of the transmission system, which carries water under the harbor from Oakland to Alameda, a city on an island in San Francisco Bay, via four pipelines — the new earthquake-resistant line and three older lines, says Raffi Moughamian,
