A Google map showing Emmett Avenue.
The Derby Water Pollution Control Authority held a hearing Wednesday to explain to the public why they want to use bond money to put new sewers below Emmett Avenue.
The Valley Indy streamed the meeting live on Facebook. Click the image below to watch it.
Voters in 2014 gave permission to the city to borrow $31.2 million in repairs and upgrades to Derby’s sanitary sewer system.
The work includes replacing pump stations, pipes, and upgrading ancient equipment at the main treatment facility off Caroline Street downtown.
But the pipes under Emmett Avenue were not included on the “to do” list.
However, voters in 2014 also approved $3.75 million to mill and pave a bunch of city roads, including Emmett Avenue.
While Emmett Avenue wasn’t on the original list of sewer repairs, the pipes under the ground are starting to show their age, so city officials working the the WPCA have decided to add it to the repair list.
The Emmett Avenue sewer job will cost somewhere between $550,000 and $880,000, according to bids received by the WPCA.
A contract has yet to be awarded.
The milling and paving will cost just over $1 million, bringing the total cost of the sewer work and the road work to between $1.5 million and $1.9 million.
It makes sense to do the work at roughly the same time, WPCA Chairman Jack Walsh said, instead of paving the road and then coming back later to tear it up to fix the sewers.
The sewer work will use the money voters approved in 2014 — but that doesn’t mean the WPCA is going over budget.
They found at least $1 million in savings by figuring out a way to install a new sewage pump station on Roosevelt Drive in the same area as an existing pump station.
Originally, engineers said they wanted to build a new pump station across the street, which would have required the city to purchase private land for the project, driving up the cost.
Derby City Treasurer Keith McLiverty also got a green light to use the bond money from Douglas W. Gillette, an attorney with Day Pitney LLP.
He’s the city’s bond counsel.
He wrote a letter June 6 saying using the sewer money for Emmett Avenue is OK because it falls in line with the language of the 2014 voter-approved referendum.
