November 16, 2006

Village Planning Assistant Ed Amrhein is on site daily at the Dayton Street sewer replacement project making sure the pipes and manholes line up properly and dealing with underground contingencies.

By Virgil Hervey

If the rough patches of road, traffic delays, and detours that villagers have been experiencing on Dayton Street between Stafford Street and East Enon Road for the past few months seem like deja vu, that is because the current work represents the second half of an ongoing project. The first part of the Dayton Street sewer replacement project, which was completed in 2003, covered the stretch between Stafford Street and the bike path. The project was originally conceived in the late 90s, according to Village Manger Eric Swansen, and was planned to be completed in several phases, because the job was too big to do at one time.

Work on this second phase, which began in September, will come to a halt about a week after Thanksgiving, Swansen said.

The work is necessary because the old sewer system simply didn’t provide enough capacity, Swansen said in a recent interview, and the result was crumbling manholes. Gravity sends sewage down Dayton Street to a pumping station on the other side of U.S. 68, and the station pumps the sewage to a higher level until gravity moves it to the sewage treatment plant. When the system reaches capacity, it comes under pressure. It becomes depressurized when it reaches a manhole and sewage collects in the basin at the bottom, generating hydrogen sulfide gas that then causes the manholes to deteriorate.

Manholes provide Village workers access to the sewer line and potential blockages every 300 feet, Village Planning Assistant Ed Amrhein, who is acting as construction inspector in the project, said in a recent interview. The new manholes, made of pre-cast concrete, are designed to resist corrosion, while the old ones were made of concrete blocks. Four manholes have already been replaced in this section and there is one left to do, Amrhein said.

Other project goals include upgrading sewage pipes to a uniform size of 15 inches, Swansen said, and to repave and repair the deteriorating roadway.

Both Swansen and Amrhein said that the road project was not motivated by Antioch University McGregor, which broke ground last week as the first building in the Center for Business and Education (CBE). The sewer replacement was in the works long before the CBE was conceived, Swansen said; however, while the work is being done, it makes sense to extend the pipe across East Enon Road to the new McGregor location. Community Resources has obtained grant money to extend the line to the CBE, and no Village money will be used for the utilities extension to that location, he said.

When doing a project of this size, it is wise to plan for the future by installing larger capacity pipe, Swansen said, and the difference in cost for a larger size pipe is not that great. The real expense of a sewer replacement project is the labor involved in getting the pipe in the ground, he said.

The new pipe should be able to handle all of the current load, plus a fully occupied CBE and 65 percent of the demands of the Fogg Farm property, should the Village approve the annexation of the 40-acre farm, Amrhein said. Last month, the owners of the Fogg Farm, located near the CBE, requested annexation into the Village, and Village Council is expected to address the request in January.

In addition, hook-ups are being provided for new potential housing to the north of Dayton Street, including the Stancliff development.

Swansen said he is looking into the possibility of a latecomer’s agreement in the event that the Fogg Farm is developed, in order to make the developers pay their fair share of the line. The owners, the Fogg Farm Trust and Doug Miller, were invited to contribute to the expense of burying the pipe even deeper to increase the potential capacity from their property, but they declined, Swansen said.

Amrhein is on site at the project daily to make sure the pipes and manholes line up properly and to deal with any underground contingencies, he said. A laser beam is projected from one manhole to the next as the pipe is laid in order to insure that it lines up properly, he said.

Dayton Street has been open for at least part of the day every day during this part of the project, according to Amrhein. During the first phase of the Dayton Street sewer project, however, “the road was closed when nothing was happening,” he said. During this phase he has worked hard to avoid closures.

The Dayton Street project also includes repaving the roadway from Stafford to East Enon and replacing 400 feet of waterline between Stafford Street and High Street to bring it from six-inch pipe to eight inches to conform with the rest of the system, Amrhein said.

Construction crews are working from detailed plans for the existing pipes and cables under the road, but every once in a while there is a surprise, such as the waterline that workers found near the intersection of East Enon and Dayton that was not in the plans, according to Amrhein. The new sewer pipe runs much deeper than anything else under the road, thereby avoiding conflicts with existing infrastructure.

However, once in a while, a waterline or a cable gets broken during the digging. Amrhein commended Kelly Fox and the water crew for their prompt responses on the few occasions when a pipe broke during construction.

He also thanked The Antioch Company for being a “good neighbor,” by providing electricity and closing its loading dock for a day while a nearby manhole was being replaced, he said.

The total cost of the Dayton Street project is estimated to be $623,896, and the bulk of the funding comes from a $461,313 grant under Ohio Issue 2, Swansen said. Other funding was provided by Miami Township, the Motor Vehicle Permissive Tax, and Village water and sewer funds.

Future Village capital improvement projects include solving the water flow problem on Xenia Avenue in downtown to improve firefighting capacity, Swansen said. That project would start with the extension of a waterline down Short Street from South Walnut Street and the installation of a hydrant in front of Deaton’s Do it Best Hardware, as a part of a paving and waterline replacement project on South Walnut. The Village plans to begin that project next spring, Amrhein said.

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com