Derry Department of Public Works

The Derry Department of Public Works is the municipal agency charged with maintaining the town's physical infrastructure: its streets, sewers, storm drains, and public works. Throughout the novel, the department appears as a marker of everyday civic life, its orange sawhorses and stenciled signs a familiar sight on Derry's streets. Yet this mundane agency is also the keeper of the town's hidden circulatory system, the vast network of sewers and drains that runs beneath Derry and serves as the primary habitat and hunting ground for the entity known as It.

Role in the Flood and the Sewer System

The department is first mentioned during the flood of October 1957, when its sawhorses block off Witcham Street near the storm drain where George Denbrough will meet his death. The flood has overwhelmed the city's drainage capacity, and the department's work crews, including Zack Denbrough, are out removing sandbags as the waters recede. This flood, and the overwhelmed drains, are the immediate context for George's encounter with Pennywise. Later, Bill Denbrough learns from his father, who works for Bangor Hydro, that the sewer and drain systems are a chaotic, poorly mapped labyrinth. The department's own records are incomplete; blueprints for large sections of the system have been lost. This lack of knowledge makes the sewers a dangerous, unknowable space, one that the Losers' Club must eventually enter to confront It.

The Pumping Stations and the Barrens

The department's pumping stations, concrete cylinders that rise a few feet out of the ground in the Barrens, are a recurring landmark. Ben Hanscom, with his architectural eye, calls them "Morlock holes," a reference to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine that captures their ominous, subterranean quality. These stations hum with machinery and are connected to the vast network of drains and sewers. They are the points of access through which the Losers enter the underworld, and they are also the places where the entity's presence is felt. The pumping station where the Losers descend into the sewers in 1958 is a key location; its broken pump and the open manhole cover mark the beginning of their final confrontation. The department's infrastructure, designed to manage water and waste, becomes the pathway into the realm of the monster.

The Cycle of Violence and the Town's Infrastructure

The department's work is also tied to the cyclical violence that plagues Derry. The novel notes that the town's murder rate is six times the national average, and that children disappear at an alarming rate, especially during the peak of the 27-year cycle. The sewers and drains, maintained by the department, are the means by which It moves undetected and disposes of its victims' remains. The department's failure to fully map or understand its own system is a metaphor for the town's willful blindness to the evil that lives beneath it. The agency's mundane, bureaucratic function—keeping the water flowing and the streets clear—is a thin veneer over a much darker reality. The department's infrastructure, meant to serve the living, is co-opted by a force that feeds on death.

The Destruction of the System

During the apocalyptic storm of May 31, 1985, the entire system collapses. The Canal, overwhelmed by floodwaters, backs up and causes the downtown area to cave in. The sewers and drains, the department's domain, become conduits for destruction. The collapse is not merely a natural disaster; it is the physical manifestation of the entity's death throes. The infrastructure that once served It is now destroyed along with It. The destruction of the department's works is a sign that the cycle of violence has finally been broken, and that the town's hidden geography has been irrevocably altered.