Northfield gets much needed water main upgrades
It was June 26, 2015 at 7:00am and workers are commencing with replacing water pipes that had been installed way back in 1906. Several other locations are also being worked on this summer, all of are important to the community. Now, early in the morning I can see the workers digging up the street at the intersection of Route 12 and East Street. They look like a small crowd of yellow jackets!
We knew this was coming, and had also received a reminder notice from the Town Manger, Jeff Schulz. At the other end of East Street the road forks into steep Turkey Hill and also King Street. King Street happens to lead to the Memorial Park. (Town swimming pool and baseball fields) Pipes will be replaced going down these streets as well. The Memorial Park was unavailable for some time and also Turkey Hill could not be used. I don’t know how they could of done that any other way though. The town did have an emergency medical rig available just in case someone needed help while Turkey Hill was not passable.
Looking down the other way I see this big metal thing. Still don’t know what it is called, but it looks like a trash bin.
A couple of days later…
Now it is July 29th at 9:30 AM and up “my” street they came, steadily progressing along, tearing up the pavement with care.
Close to 5:00 PM and quite a bit of digging, replacement and then packing the street back down has occurred.
My impression so far is that this kind of project is not always a simple process and of course you can run into unexpected difficulties.
It was occasionally rather loud when they were using the cat and then covering the pipes back up. This sent vibrations through the buildings that reminded me of a thunderstorm, but with more shaking! It was really something you don’t experience everyday and seemed a bit bizarre since I spend alot of time down there.
I didn’t take pictures every day and the project progressed in stages over a month or so. After about three weeks there was a lull and then they came back and dug the street up again to hook up the pipes to the buildings.
The workers were very nice and they entertained my occasional questions about the process.
More pictures later!