Trending
FAIRMONT-- At the April 11 Fairmont City Council meeting, the council approved of a $247,000 bid for a sliplining project. City Engineer Troy Nemmers shared that the project will cover just a mile and a half, or one percent, of the 75 miles of sanitary sewer lines in the city.
Nemmers explained that a project like this is a way to try to get the utilities to last a little longer and while costly, is less expensive than a full street reconstruction.
There are several color-coded maps of the city that show the decade different parts of the city's utilities were installed. A large portion, about 50 percent, of the city's utilities were done in the 50s and 60s.
"When all of that goes bad, it's going to be really expensive to replace it. So much was installed when the city was booming," Nemmers said.
While there are about 75 miles of street within the city, there are about 82 miles of water main and Nemmers said about two miles of it is pre-1940.
However, Nemmers said the city is not unique or alone in having aging infrastructure.
While issues usually arise in older houses, Nemmers said it all has to do with age of the utilities in the street and the type of materials that the pipe is made of, as it wasn't until the late 1990s that PVC plastic water main started being used. It's also dependent on what the service line and plumbing is like in the house. That all has an impact on what people may or may not see in their water.
Nemmers said if anyone calls with issues, the city will send a crew to look at what the house has for fixtures, as certain fixtures will rust more quickly than others. Or they'll look at the main and potentially flush hydrants.
At the city council meeting Nemmers also addressed some pothole concerns on Park Street. The south portion of Park Street has been in the improvement program the last two rounds but has been bumped out, most recently by the Fair Lakes Avenue and Lake Avenue projects.
Park Street is tentatively planned for 2023. At that time the street and all of the utilities will be replaced. The project would cost a pretty penny. Nemmers said it could cost as much as $1,000 a foot and would cover about 1,000 feet for a project totaling $1 million. The project would cover just .2 percent of the streets in Fairmont
"It adds up pretty quick," Nemmers said.
This summer, Nemmers said they will be doing street rating, which entails looking at the condition of the pavement and a map that shows the age of the utilities.
"We'll try to come up with a plan where we're replacing streets that need utilities. That's a full-depth reconstruction that gets expensive," Nemmers said.
He further explained that not only do they look at the surface of the streets, but the utilities underneath. Nemmers said when there's only so much money, the trick is finding a balance.
"Do you let the road crumble to nothing until the utilities are ready (to be replaced), or do you try and get a nice driving surface in between," Nemmers said.
He said roughly it's every 80 years for a full reconstruction, including road and utilities and resurfacing and overlays are needed in the 15-30 year range.
However, there are also "band-aid" fixes, such as the upcoming sliplining project on the sanitary sewer this year where two miles, or .25 percent of the system will be fixed at multiple locations.