Work on West Wooster Street will continue through the summer. (Debbie Rogers | Sentinel-Tribune)
By Peter Kuebeck
Utilities work which has affected West Wooster Street since last year will continue this summer.
“They’re going to continue to do their work on the sewer,” said Public Infrastructure Director Brian O’Connell. “They continue to make progress. They’ve got to get the sewer down to Church Street and then they’ve got to come back and there’s a little bit of work yet to do on Haskins Road.”
There is also work involving a trunk sewer which goes north on Meeker Street and flows to the wastewater treatment plant.
“So they’re going to finish up the sewer work, maybe late July, early August timeframe,” O’Connell said.
Afterward, there will be work to pave Wooster from Church Street west, and then paving on Haskins Road to north of Poe Road and to the city limits.
O’Connell said that previous work in the area on a water line is completed, and the sewer work currently being undertaken involves consolidating multiple older sewers into one new, larger sewer.
“It will simplify our operations and maintenance in the area, we’ll have a brand new sewer to service the entire area and just be easier for us to maintain overall,” he said.
With the new water and sewer lines, O’Connell said, there shouldn’t be issues with leaking pipes or old clay tiles falling apart.
“We’re trying to solve a few issues with this project,” he said.
O’Connell noted that the city has delayed some road work projects on Pearl Street and the Wallace Avenue area due to the West Wooster project, so as not to cause any additional issues for drivers.
He also said that other neighborhood paving projects won’t be an issue.
“The other paving projects, I think they’re going to be more in the residential neighborhoods and those are more isolated to those specific neighborhoods,” he said.
With the roundabout under construction currently at Campbell Hill Road, Alumni Drive and East Wooster Street, O’Connell said that while people traveling across town would be impacted by both projects, they aren’t impacting one another.
“They’re two different contractors, two different projects. Campbell Hill is far enough away from Church Street that they don’t really impact each other from a disruption standpoint, from my standpoint at least,” he said. “But overall the two projects are fairly well separated that they don’t seem to be causing an impact on each other” or issues with traffic heading one way or the other.
“I think when it’s done, it will be a big improvement for just traffic flow and navigating the area in general,” O’Connell said of the roundabout.
The $3.2 million West Wooster project was included in the 2022 budget and is being paid for from the city’s water and sewer capital improvement funds.
