Date: Fri 07-Jun-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

sewer-phase-3-Main-St

Full Text:

Sewer Officials Review Next Phase Of Project With Residents

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

About 50 residents from central Newtown have met with town officials to

discuss how the ongoing sewer system construction project will affect their

properties during the coming months.

The residents discussed the effects of sewer construction on: Mount Pleasant

Road, Main Street, South Main Street, Lovell's Lane, Laurel Road, Elm Drive,

Sugar Street, Country Club Road, Hawley Road, School House Hill Road, and

Johnnie Cake Lane. The construction work collectively is known as "Contract

3."

Water Pollution Control Authority (WPCA) Chairman Peter Alagna convened the

public hearing on sewer construction May 30 in the Alexandria Room at Edmond

Town Hall.

In order to install public sewer mains, the town needs temporary easements

from people who own property where the sewers will be buried. To maintain the

sewer lines after they are installed and operating, the town needs to obtain

permanent easements, which will allow sewer maintenance crews onto the private

properties to correct any operational problems.

Peter Grose, sewering project manager for Fuss and O'Neill, Inc, the town's

consulting civil engineers, explained that the sewer system has been designed

to avoid the removal of large trees along its course.

To avoid a long line of specimen trees standing along the east side of Main

Street, most sewer mains there between School House Hill Road and Glover

Avenue will be installed by directional drilling. Such drilling creates small

tunnels into which the sewers are inserted. Through directional drilling, the

sewers are installed without much disruption to the ground's surface and are

positioned beneath existing buried utility lines.

The sewer tunneling project, which is known as Contract 3-A, will be addressed

at an upcoming public hearing.

"We're trying to avoid damage wherever we can," Mr Grose said of the overall

sewering project.

He acknowledged, though, that sewer construction is "certainly a disruption to

traffic and to your property if you have a sewer line on it."

Work on Contract 3 might start in about a month, Mr Grose said. Because that

construction project involves extensive sewering, construction could continue

into the 1997 construction season, he added. The pace of the project depends

upon how many work crews the general contractor places on the job, he noted.

Easements

Town Attorney David Grogins said the easements being sought by the town are

generally for strips of private property 20 feet wide. In most cases, the

easements are being sought for land where putting up buildings is prohibited

due to zoning regulations, he said.

After easements are granted to the town, property owners can park vehicles on

them, drive across them, and plant vegetation on them, but they are not

allowed to plant large trees on them, he said.

The town will provide sewer "stub lines" that extend from sewer mains onto

private properties to facilitate future sewer hookups to buildings, he said.

"We will try to accommodate people to the extent that we can" in terms of

where sewer stubs enter private properties, Mr Grogins said. "We don't want to

surprise anyone here. We want to be open."

Mr Grogins asked that property owners review the proposed easements which the

town has prepared, adding that some people may want to hire lawyers for legal

advice on signing the documents.

"You're entitled to compensation by the town for permanent easements," he

said.

Property owners soon will be individually notified by mail how much money the

town is willing to pay them for permanent easements, he said. The town won't

provide any money to property owners for temporary easements, according to Mr

Grogins.

Questions

Property owners then asked town officials a variety of questions concerning

how sewer construction would affect their individual properties. These

questions included queries on: the location of sewer lines; how the appraiser

set the cash values of easements; the hours and dates of construction; how

sewer mains will be connected to buildings; restoration work to properties

that have been excavated for sewers; legal appeals by property owners who are

dissatisfied with the easement compensation offered by the town; the schedule

for sewer excavation in specific areas; how sewage pumping stations work;

water outages due to sewer construction; and how blasting is used in sewer

construction, among other topics.

Resident Richard Mulligan of 74 Main Street expressed displeasure after he had

reviewed plans concerning how the sewering project would affect his property.

The plans call for the removal of a portion of a stone wall on his land. The

removed wall section would be replaced as part of restoration work.

Mr Mulligan said he has decided he doesn't want a portion of the wall removed

and later rebuilt, but instead wants the wall to be left alone. He said he

thought he had already made clear his position to sewer officials.

Michael Anderson of Fuss and O'Neill told Mr Mulligan that the map depicting a

portion of Mr Mulligan's stone wall removed was drawn for bidding purposes and

could be modified, if necessary.

Mr Grogins asked that Mr Mulligan discuss the matter with town officials after

the May 30 public hearing.

Town officials similarly asked that several property owners wait until after

the hearing to discuss how their properties will be affected by the project.

In response to a resident's query, Mr Alagna said the town has safeguards in

place to ensure that septic fields which are damaged by sewer excavation will

be put back in working order by construction workers so that the fields

function until residences are connected to the sewer system.

Dr Steven Landin, a dentist, told town officials that while the Queen Street

area was being excavated for sewers last year, he had two water outages while

working on patients at his dental practice at 23 Main Street.

Dr Landin asked whether he should expect water outages at his practice while

sewers are installed along Main Street.

Mr Grose explained that the sewer line which will pass in front of Dr Landin's

office will be part of the construction work specified in Contract 3-A in

which sewer lines will be placed in small tunnels. These tunnels will be

drilled below other existing utility lines, including water lines, according

to Mr Grose.

Sewer excavators encountered numerous pipe breaks and outages while laying

sewers in the Taunton Lake Drive and Hanover Road areas. The poor condition of

aging pipe, as well as a lack of water pipe mapping, lead to the water

outages.

Mr Grose said construction crews will seek to keep blasting to a minimum while

installing sewer lines to minimize disruptions to residents.

The town is under a state order to install a sewer system to rectify

longstanding groundwater pollution problems caused by failing septic systems

in the Taunton Pond North, Borough, and Sandy Hook Center. Voters approved

$34.3 million in bonding for the project in 1992.