A Google map showing Emmett Avenue, a road next to Route 8 in west Derby.
The Derby Water Pollution Control Authority will hold a public hearing 6 p.m. Wednesday (June 28) on a plan to replace the sewer infrastructure under Emmett Avenue.
Click here for the meeting agenda.
Emmett Avenue, a residential road in west Derby, was included as a road to be milled and paved as part of a $3.75 million road bond referendum Derby voters approved in 2014.
That year voters also approved $31.2 million in repairs and upgrades to the city’s sanitary sewer system (pipes, pump stations and equipment at the main treatment facility). But that referendum did not authorize sewer repairs under Emmett Avenue.
Click here to read precisely what the Board of Aldermen put to voters in 2014.
While sewer work wasn’t scheduled for Emmett Avenue, the pipes under the road are 48 years old and showing their age.
Since Emmett Avenue is going to be torn up for milling and paving, officials decided to add sewer pipe replacements to the “to do” list.
The alternative, officials argued, was fixing the road — only to tear it up at some point later to fix failing sewer pipes.
The Emmett Avenue project is upward of $1 million, with money coming from the 2014 road and sewer votes.
The public hearing is required because Emmett Avenue was not part of the sewer work authorized by voters in 2014.
But an attorney advised the WPCA and the city it’s OK to add it to the list since doing the work will help Derby deal with its major “infiltration/inflow“ problem. That’s when stormwater or groundwater makes its way into the sewer system and, in the case of Derby, overwhelms the main treatment plant.
While the WPCA did not originally budget for the Emmett Avenue work, they managed to trim at least $1 million off the price tag to replace a pump station on Roosevelt Drive near Cemetery Avenue by rebuilding it in the same general area it is now.
Initial plans were to possibly purchase private land in the area and to build a new pump station across the street from its current location.
“After months of discussion and review including recommendations from another engineer, we determined that building next to the existing station would work and would be much less expensive than the other options,” WPCA commission Chairman Jack Walsh said in an email.
“At the moment, the engineers are drawing up the plans for the new Roosevelt Drive Pump station and we hope to be out to bid and start construction next year. The savings will be considerable when compared to building on the other side of the road.”
The original cost of the pump station was $7.4 million.
