ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The City of Escanaba is making headway on a major project at its Water Department.
After several months of being closed off, the road to and around Escanaba’s Water Department has reopened to traffic.
“Our dewatering wells are still across there, so we’ve got a hump of gravel across there so you can’t go really fast,” said City of Escanaba Water & Wastewater Superintendent Jeff Lampi. “Once we get some more construction, there will be asphalt and curbing put back in in the spring, and that’ll shut the road down temporarily again.”
The work is part of an ongoing project for the plant, the bulk of which is now being done inside.
“Back in the day when they built the plant, they only had one reservoir, without the ability to take it off of line to clean it out,” Lampi said. “If there was a problem with the reservoir, we’d only have a two- or three-day time span to get in there, fix it, and work on it.”
A new, second clear well allows maintenance to be done on the existing one and for both to work together to improve water quality.
Other upgrades include adding about 50% more in-ground tanks near the plant.
“The idea is it gives them a little more flexibility with when they make water, how they distribute it,” said C2AE civil engineer Rebecca Bender. “We’re adding some more powerful pumps.”
Bender says other developments will help ensure the plant stays in operation at all times.
“We can’t just pause water distribution to put something in place, so one of these paths has a new backwash pump and the other is actually going in the opposite direction from how it will in the future,” she explained. “We’re trying to be creative about how we use the assets we have so that people have uninterrupted service.”
The project’s timeline has changed has seen a number of changes due to shipping delays. Lampi now expects work to be completed in late June.
Aside from the roadwork later this year and future water quality improvements, Lampi is happy to say residents should not be affected.
“Things are going well,” he said. “It’s going to be a great improvement. The public won’t even know how valuable this is because we’re preventing many unknown catastrophic things from happening in the future.”
The City of Escanaba Water and Wastewater Departments have a combined $40 million of work planned, including the replacement of the Ludington ift station and water main and lead service line replacements, that will affect Ludington Street beginning this spring. The City will host public meetings leading up to that work to keep residents involved in the process. Visit the City of Escanaba Facebook page for updates on public meetings.
