Residents and travelers might hear the grinding and hammering of street construction Monday with the start of a waterline replacement project on South Broadway Street.
The project is a prelude to a larger Colorado Department of Transportation resurfacing of the street in concrete, which is scheduled to begin next summer.
At a public meeting Wednesday at the City of Cortez Service Center, city Public Works Director Jack Nickerson said the project is aimed at saving maintenance costs by installing new waterlines to replace aging lines some of which date back to 1963.
The reason were doing this is because CDOT will be replacing the roadway from Burger King to approximately Lotsa Pasta with a concrete, Nickerson said. Its very expensive for us to repair lines under the concrete, as we found out two years ago with a break on Main (Street) that cost us almost $65,000.
The waterline project is expected to take 90 days, said Jason Umberger, project manager with Triad Western Constructors. He told a handful of business owners who attended Wednesdays meeting the project will result in single-lane closures, as well as the occasional 20-minute maximum delay, but should not block business access.
Were going to start in two locations, Umberger said. Ones going to be down at the Johnson Building. The other ones going to be at Seventh Street. Were probably going to have two or three operations going at a time.
From there, workers will close part of the east lane of Broadway, where they will replace lines from Seventh Street to Third Street. The project will then move to the west lane and come back down the same section of Broadway. Lines spanning the width of Broadway will be replaced in three places at the intersections of Fifth, Third and McElmo streets.
So when we do the east side, well do half of those crossings, Umberger said. And when we come down the west side, well do the other half. ... Some of this project is designed to better loop the existing system. Umberger said that if there is a water line break, or it has to be worked on, then people are more likely to have water.
During the project, water service to businesses and residents near the construction might be interrupted for three- to four-hour periods, Nickerson said. Individuals will be notified in advance before their water is shut off. Potable water tanks might be provided for restaurants.
Most businesses along the street have two access points, only one of which might be shut off for a few hours during work on the project, Nickerson said. Pedestrian walkways might also be blocked or rerouted during construction.
Trenches will be 3 feet wide and will be repaved with a 5-foot wide patch, Nickerson said. During the project, the city will add or replace at least 10 fire hydrants.
Large vehicles and vehicles pulling trailers might have difficulty performing U-turns during the construction, he said.
I think weve got a good plan, Umberger said. Well make this as painless as possible.
The Cortez City Council awarded a $672,630 bid to Triad for the waterline replacement project. The citys water fund will pay for the project, Nickerson said.
The state concrete project is scheduled to begin in August or September 2012 and involves resurfacing the street with 8 inches of concrete, said Nancy Shanks, West Slope spokesperson for the state transportation department. The concrete project has $9.4 million in state funds budgeted.
Existing curb, gutter, drainage and median are expected to remain, Shanks said. Existing asphalt will be ground up and reused as road base.
A public meeting will be held on the concrete project before it begins to get public feedback on impacts to traffic and businesses, Shanks said.
(The meeting will be held) so that we can hear suggestions from the public ways we can minimize the impact, because there will be impacts, she said. We recognize that.
For more information on the waterline project, call the Triad public information officer at 749-1113.
Reach Reid Wright at [email protected].
