M & L Construction Inc.

The state insures the crew under workers'-comp classes for excavation, grading, underground utility line construction, overhead phone and television line work, intrastate trucking and construction project management, with a workforce in the 31 to 50 range. Public-works filings run from 2003 to the present for agencies including the City of Spokane, the Washington State Department of Transportation, the Port of Whitman County, Spokane Valley, Spokane Public Schools, Spokane Transit Authority, NoaNet and Washington State University. Licence-matched permits in Spokane cover sewer and fire code work. The company advertises directional drilling, hydro excavation, pipe bursting, cable plowing and casing ramming, and says it runs Trimble GPS equipment. The state lists Melvin and Lois Hattenburg as principals since 1980, and Scot and Ray Hattenburg since 2014. This is a heavy civil outfit built around agency and commercial work, much of it won as a sub to general contractors and through repeat relationships. It fits a sewer main or road excavation on a public project, a fiber or gas run bored under a street without open cutting, or site grading for a commercial lot around Spokane. A kitchen remodel or a small fix around the house falls outside what this crew is set up for. On a Spokane property, the repair-or-replace question for buried lines usually comes down to the pipe's material and age. Older clay and cast-iron sewer laterals under the South Hill and older north side neighborhoods crack and take on roots, and patching one joint often just moves the failure down the line. Trenchless replacement methods like pipe bursting can swap a whole run with less digging through lawns, driveways and frozen winter ground. A camera inspection before deciding tells you whether a spot repair will hold or whether the line has reached the end of its life.