The Bakersfield College campus appears, to some, to be in shambles. Students attending classes the first week were welcomed by heavy equipment next to mounds of dirt and on top of trenches, walkway signs with enough yellow tape for an entire season of CSI, new pipes, old pipes, backhoes, and trucks – lots of trucks. There is hardly a place outside where one can pretend to study.

A blind student who didn’t offer his name was downright livid. He launched into a colorful description of his experiences with the “mine field,” as he referred to the zone between the library and Campus Center.

BC officials, though, wanted to address certain issues on campus – some that were overdue and that have caused problems, such as waterline breaks, in the past.

The problem is beneath our feet, and it has been there since 1955. The pipes. Not just the water lines, but the gas lines as well. After almost 60 years, they are no longer possess adequate capacity to sustain the volumes we casually consume on a daily basis. Therefore, with funding from the safety, repair and improvement district bond, the BC administration is carrying out an extensive rehabilitation and upgrade of the school’s plumbing systems. The results of which, according to Amber Chiang, BC public relations director, will be a far more efficient system potentially capable of saving millions of BC dollars in future operating costs and helping to ease the droughts that we are enduring.

While no one is saying that the gas lines on campus are in a state of imminent failure, it is a fact that crews have discovered at least one previously completely unknown gas line.

In fact, during our opening day event a little more than a week ago, maintenance and operations crews identified a major water line that appears to have been leaking for a very long time representing a real threat to the sustainability of our ground soil.

A completion date of February 2015 has been set and by all accounts the crew is ahead of schedule suggesting they may be able to finish by Christmas assuming the present pace can be sustained.

With all of the yellow tape and holes around campus, BC officials urge students and others to make safety a primary concern. Anyone observing a possibly hazardous situation is urged to call BC Public Safety at (661) 395-4554.