Date: Fri 09-Feb-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

sewer-Main-Street

Full Text:

Engineers Proceed With Designs For Main St Sewer Line

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

The town's consulting civil engineers are proceeding with the final sewer

designs for the portion of the municipal sewer system which has attracted the

most public attention during recent months - the eastern side of Main Street

between Hanover Road and Glover Avenue.

Sewers to serve this area will, for the most part, be installed by an

innovative tunneling technique known as "directional drilling." Directional

drilling employs equipment that creates lateral pathways for gravity-powered

sewers beneath the ground's surface into which sections of seamless plastic

pipe are inserted.

Directional drilling is used in places where conventional shored, open-pit

trenching is deemed to be too damaging and disruptive to the landscape. The

issue of where and how to install sewer lines along the east side of Main

Street has revolved around the desire to limit damage to the stately maple

trees which line the thoroughfare. The engineering firm promoted directional

drilling as a way to limit construction damage to streetscape there.

The sewer work along the east side of Main Street between Hanover Road and

Glover Avenue is expected to start about July 8.

"The [contract] will require one permanent easement and dozens of temporary

easements for extension of service connections beyond the property line at the

street. The purpose of the temporary easements is to allow excavation of pits

and placement of long pipe segments to install (lateral sewer lines) by

directional drilling, thus eliminating excavation within the root zones of the

specimen trees," according to Fuss and O'Neill.

As of late January, it was anticipated that a public hearing on easement for

this portion of the project would be held May 9.

The town is under a state Department of Environmental Protection order to

resolve longstanding groundwater pollution problems posed by numerous failing

septic systems in the Borough, Taunton Pond North, and Sandy Hook Center. The

$30.4-million sewer system construction project is slated for completion in

the last quarter of 1997.