SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Today's Why Guy question comes from Ward, as he was walking the streets of Midtown Sacramento: "Why are the City of Sacramento's manhole covers from India?"
Well, we hit some sidewalks to see if we could find one. Sure enough, in the downtown area near 5th and X streets, we found a manhole cover made in India. Nicely raised lettering, too, with the City of Sacramento on it. A fine manhole cover. From India.
Walt lived in India for two years and said he knew they exported rugs and spices, but manhole covers?
We contacted the City of Sacramento to ask about the imported covers. Lon Peterson with the Department of Utilities responded.
"We order our lids through a public bid process...which is a broad bid that outlines items we buy, like manhole covers, drain grates, and other drainage and sewer-related items. Once a vendor is established, we purchase our manhole covers with our have specifications for things like size and size of lettering that says 'Property of City of Sacramento,'" he said.
We found a few manhole covers with "India" on them, so this wasn't just a passing thing. Apparently, though, there's no Sacramento loyalty to manhole covers from India since the city is not ordering new ones from them right now.
Peterson added, "as an example, our current lids are sourced locally, but are made in Mexico."
We couldn't find any of the manhole covers that were made in Mexico. But we did find one that had no country name stamped on it, including one that said “Blow Off” so we thought that was a good time to end this story.