Water and sewer board set priorties

he Carbon County/Saratoga Water and Sewer Joint Powers Board (W&SJPB) met last Wednesday to discuss upcoming and current projects.

The new water meter system is still the main issue for W&SJPB. Ten percent of the total bid price was withheld in the case that any original work on the meter relocations needed to be redone. Most of the work between feed lines and the meters turned out faulty and the town will need to re-examine the work. $100,000 dollars is being withheld at this point to cover or defray those costs.

“Getting the water meters completed and working properly is the first and most important project on the agenda,” Director of Public Works Chuck Bartlett said.

Between Farm Street and Bridge Street, and in the grid between 6th through 11th Streets, the sewer mains were constructed with 45 degree bends.

These 45 degree bends are locations where the sewers are chronically backing up. There is no access to these bends in the main because the bend occurs between manholes in that stretch of pipe.

In March, the W&SJPB is renting sewer camera equipment to find the bends in the main and mark them on the surface. The next step will be to dig a manhole at that location to gain access to the 45 degree bend and that section of the main.

The main sewer line coming into the sewage lagoon is made of ductile iron and was installed in the 1980’s. The pipe itself had a failure and subsequent leak coming into the lagoon. W&SJPB has replaced that section of pipe with a PVC pipe coupling. According to Bartlett, the problem section is fixed and working properly now, but replacing that main totally with PVC is the third priority on the slate for this summer.

In an interview with Bartlett after the meeting, he stated that a fourth project is in the works. During flooding two seasons ago, there was quite a bit of water leaking into manholes in the streets near the flood plain. This, in turn, created quite a bit of extra water treatment for the town. Now, in the late spring, W&SJPB will contract to have these manholes sealed to prevent water leaking into the manholes in the future.