Princeton, Ky., Looks to CIPP to Address Sewers
Desire on the part of the state transportation cabinet to repave the entirety of Hopkinsville Street in the Princeton city limits may lead to improved water and sewer service in the same section of town, according to the Times Leader.
Mayor Gale Cherry and directors of the Princeton Water and Wastewater Commission discussed options for making and funding the upgrades Thursday.
The nature of the street’s physical structure, said water commission Superintendent Joey Anderson, has contributed to its deterioration.
A layer of concrete runs under the asphalt paving along the street. Whenever the water commission makes cuts in the roadway to repair aging lines, crew members fill the cuts with rock rather than concrete.
When heavy-loaded trucks and/or other equipment travel the roadway and hit the areas where cuts have been made and paved over, their weight causes the pavement in the areas that no longer have a concrete base to deteriorate.
The cuts are needed, Anderson said, because the department has between 10 and 15 customers who remain connected to an old 4-inch water line.
The commission hopes to hook most of those customers to a newer 8-inch main and disconnect the 4-inch line.
The area in question runs from the Cadiz Street intersection south to the intersection of Sandlick Road.
Sewer lines in the same area are also in need of an upgrade, he said. Some of the pipes are made of petrified clay, and some are cast iron.
Decades in the ground have led to root infiltration and other problems, he said.
Hethcoat and Davis engineers Ricky Oakley and Jon Allen, consulted on the issue, recommended replacing the sewer main and the laterals connecting the main to customer pipes.
Rather than being dug up and removed, the lines would be filled with “cured in place” pipe, flexible resin that lines existing pipes and hardens in place when exposed to steam or hot water.
The cost of replacing 1,600 feet of 8-inch sewer main and 41 laterals was estimated at $240,000, with $40,500 of that included for contingencies and other miscellaneous costs.
“If the state comes in and paves that road and nothing’s done, we’re going to be back out there cutting it,” Anderson said.
Cherry said the city had put the water and sewer projects in as one of the city’s “shovel-ready” priorities in an application to the Department for Local Government, in anticipation of funding from the federal economic stimulus.
Grant funds anticipated to be available soon could also be used to fund the work, Anderson said.
The package includes $30 million for state sewer projects and $19 million for water projects.
Funds could go toward water system improvements identified in an ongoing hydraulic analysis and sewer system repairs to reduce the amount of inflow and infiltration in the wastewater grid.
“We’ve got years of projects,” Anderson said.
