Date: Fri 01-Nov-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

sewers-

Full Text:

with cut: Sewer Project Is Now About 75 Complete

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

The town's continuing sanitary sewer construction project is more than 75

percent complete, according to John Whitten, senior field representative for

Fuss and O'Neill, Inc, the town's consulting engineer.

Work on the $34.3-million project is scheduled to conclude in about one year.

Workmen started sewer construction in November 1994 and, except for periods of

extreme weather during winter seasons, have continued digging the miles of

trenches for the sewage collector system, which traverses the Borough, Taunton

Pond North, and Sandy Hook Center.

Workmen have been installing a triple-box culvert at the end of Commerce Road.

When completed, the triple-box culvert, which will function as a bridge across

Tom Brook, will provide the main entryway to the sewage treatment plant. Since

construction began on the treatment plant site more than a year ago, workmen

and machines have had to travel a circuitous route across the Fairfield Hills

grounds to get to the construction site.

The Commerce Road entry to the sewage plant is expected to open within a

month, Mr Whitten said.

The existing turnaround at the end of Commerce Road will be narrowed to the

width of that road and a new turnaround will be built farther to the east.

After the sewer system is complete, the town will set a time period during

which residential and non-residential customers will be required to connect

their wastewater drains to the system. The length of time that sewer users

will have to connect to the system hasn't yet been set by the Water Pollution

Control Authority (WPCA).

The "out of pocket" costs that sewer users will bear to connect to the system

will vary depending on the complexity of their particular sewer hookup.

Relatively simple hookups involving short runs of drainpipe and easily

excavated soils may costs only $2,000 or $2,500, or so. Lengthy runs of drain

pipe with complex routing compounded by the presence of rock ledge near the

ground's surface will cost considerably more to install.

Sewer installers say that every building to which sewers are connected poses a

unique excavation situation.

After the new joint municipal-state sewage treatment plant is operating, the

sewage now treated by Fairfield Hills' existing treatment plant will be

diverted to the new plant. Sewage flows to the plant will then gradually

increase as an increasing number of municipal customers connect to the system.

Sewer line installation was underway this week along Main Street and Sugar

Street. Sugar Street was closed for six-hour periods each day from Monday to

Friday to allow workmen to extend lateral sewer lines toward residences there.

Also, workmen have been installing sewers via conventional open pit trenching

along the west side of Main Street from Edmond Town Hall northward to the

vicinity of Schoolhouse Hill Road. Work has proceeded rapidly there because

the trenching is relatively shallow at eight feet deep, there are no large

rocks to contend with in excavating the clay-based material, and construction

is taking place beneath a turfed area alongside the street, not beneath the

street, Mr Whitten said.

The the west side of Main Street between East Street and Glover Avenue will

have sewers installed via directional drilling. In directional drilling,

seamless lengths of sewer pipe are placed in bore holes drilled between large

pits. The advanced technique will be used to minimize damage to tree roots

along the street.

Weather permitting, in the coming weeks, a number of streets which had sewers

installed last year and earlier this year will receive their final coatings of

asphalt, Mr Whitten said. These include West Street, Baldwin Road, Juniper

Road, and the so-called Presidential streets.

Bids on four sewage pumping stations are expected to be let out in about one

month. The stations are needed to push sewage upward from low spots on the

periphery of the system to places where it can flow downward by the force of

gravity.

The largest run of sewer main yet to be installed in the sewer system will

extend from Diamond Drive, down Mt Pleasant Road to Main Street and then to

South Main Street to Mile Hill Road. That run of sewer pipe is more than

12,000 feet long.

When it's completed, the sewer system will include approximately 23 miles, or

about 121,000 feet of sewer mains and lateral sewer lines, Mr Whitten said.

That figure doesn't include the amount of sewer drainpipe which will extend

from buildings to the lateral lines.