E. Commercial sewer repair project will last a month

Many businesses are affected by the required work, but are still open to customers

 

Crews began digging up a section of East Commercial Street this week where it was discovered that a sewer main beneath the road is cracked and in need of repair.

 Staging took place the week prior, with excavation scheduled to commence Tuesday, Oct. 22, according to Weiser Public Works Supervisor Mike Campbell. He added that replacement of the 350-foot section between State and E. First Streets will take about a month to complete, provided no other damage is discovered during excavation.

 “We looked at it previously and knew that it was going to need to be re-lined and then when the Commercial Street project came about, I got with sewer and water. We thought we better double check it, so we sent a camera down and it disappeared because it fell off in a break, so there is a broken, offset pipe in there,” Campbell said. “Right now, it’s not causing a huge problem, but it’s going to be a problem soon and I don’t want to have to tear up new street after it’s reconstructed.”

 The sewer main, said to have been installed sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, is located between 18 and 20 feet below street level. The aging 16-inch, terracotta-style pipe was initially a candidate for re-lining, a significantly less expensive process than a total replacement. It involves injecting liquid plastic that hardens, essentially forming new pipe. Perhaps the best part of the process is that minimal excavation is required, making it a much cheaper option.

 The damage, however, which was discovered a couple of months ago, put an end to Campbell’s hopes that the pipe could be re-lined. 

 The project will cost the city roughly $80,000.

 The Weiser city council approved a $49,000 excavation bid from Anderson Excavation out of Ontario during its Sept. 9 regular monthly meeting. 

 Other costs included are materials, to be provided by Consolidated Supply out of Nampa, and for a manhole, located at the east end of the project area, that crews discovered will also need to be replaced. 

 There is also a pump rental, supplied by Rain for Rent, which is needed to re-route sewage during construction.

 “The manhole on the east side of the project, the way it’s in there, it’s not the best manhole for the situation where those pipes will come together and it’s very old, so it’s time to replace it,” Campbell said.

 He noted that the project cost is included in the 2025 fiscal budget. The new fiscal year began Oct. 1. Some extra funds to cover any unforeseen problems that could potentially surface once excavation begins was included in budgeting.

 “We just don’t know what’s down there,” Campbell said. “We don’t anticipate anything, but you just never know until you open it up. There is no gas in the way that we can see, it doesn’t look like there is any buried fiber and the power is above ground.”

 He noted that the section of sewer main is important because it handles sewage for much of the east side of town.

 “All that sewage runs down to Third Street and runs into a main lift station by the railroad tracks and then pumps to the wastewater treatment plant, so everything has to run downhill. It takes almost everything east of State Street,” Campbell said.

 The sewer main project is the second to affect Commercial Street access this year, the first a boring project to feed both water and sewer lines under the Weiser River to the new Maverik gas station south of the bridge on Highway 95. Access from the highway onto Commercial was cut off for months. It was only this week that the project wrapped up.

 The next is the Commercial Street reconstruction and realignment project, which will put the roadway between State and East Third Streets out of commission beginning sometime in spring 2025 to about mid to late summer of the same year.

 Campbell said the project aims to significantly straighten the s-curve between State and E. First Streets and that the street will be modified and shifted south. More detailed information will be provided in a future issue of the Signal American.

 The project is the result of a $2 million non-matching ITD (Idaho Transportation Department) grant the city applied for in July 2023 and was awarded the following October.

 Engineering on the project has since been completed, but the work has not yet been put out to bid.