MARION, OH–Next week, Aqua Ohio (Aqua) will begin a project to retire 4,200 linear feet of water main serving customers along Church Street between Windsor Street and South Greenwood Street. The project is expected to be complete by the end of May.
The four-inch water main being retired is believed to have been in service for more than 130 years having been installed sometime in the 1890’s. The nearly 50 customers attached to the old main will be connected to a twelve-inch water main that spans the other side of the street.
“This project is about improving service reliability and removing a redundancy in the system,” said Aqua Ohio’s Area Manager Scott Ballenger. “The main we are removing has lasted a long time but we’ve seen the frequency of water main breaks, and resulting service interruptions, increase over the past several years and it's time to take action.”
Drivers in the area are asked to use extra caution. Traffic will be maintained, but daily lane restrictions will be required. Access to individual driveways will be maintained as workers will place steel plates over excavated areas. To minimize traffic disruptions, most service connections will be tunneled under Church Street.
Water service will be maintained throughout construction. However, customers receiving new service lines will experience short-term interruptions while their services are connected to the new main near the end of the project. Those customers will be notified by Aqua in advance of the planned interruptions.
Elite Excavating Company, of Mansfield, was selected to perform the work. The budget for this project is $377,000. Ballenger said the company expects to spend more than $70 million across Aqua’s 33 Ohio systems in 2021, approximately $6 million of that will be invested locally.
Aqua Ohio is the Buckeye State’s largest investor-owned drinking water and wastewater utility and serves about 500,000 customers in 19 counties. Visit AquaAmerica.com for more information, or follow Aqua on Facebook at facebook.com/MyAquaAmerica and on Twitter at @MyAquaAmerica