Residents are concerned about damage to Eighth Street and the smell of raw sewage in their neighborhood.
A sewer replacement project that shut down traffic along Ninth Street in the downtown area for several weeks now is causing unexpected problems in East Lawrence.
City officials said Wednesday that residents around Eighth and Connecticut will have to deal with the smell of raw sewage coming from an open manhole until sometime late next week.
Meanwhile, construction crews hope to learn today whether they can finish the project without digging an open trench to replace the old pipe.
"I've received a couple of calls about it," said Lawrence City Commissioner Marty Kennedy, who lives in the area. "Mainly, they just want to know what's going on and when it's going to get done."
The replacement project began earlier this year around Memorial Stadium and has been moving east along Ninth Street for the last several months.
Most of the project involves replacing an old 21-inch sewer main with a new 34-inch main to handle a larger volume of wastewater.
To avoid digging up the street to replace the pipe, Utility Director Roger Coffey said, crews have been using a process called "pipe bursting," where a device is inserted into the old pipe to burst out its diameter so a larger pipe can be slipped inside.
But when that was done on the pipe beneath Eighth Street near Connecticut, crews found that the soil around the pipe was so tight, the pressure forced the pipe way up, creating a buckle in the middle of the street.
"We didn't take any measurements, but the staff says it's in the magnitude of a 12-inch rise, so it's significant, so repairs to that street will have to be done," Coffey said.
Chuck Adcock, who is coordinating the project for the Utilities Department, said that segment of Eighth Street has an asphalt surface on top of an old brick street. He said both the brick foundation and the asphalt surface would need to be repaired.
According to Coffey, contractors working on the project plan to conduct an experiment today to find out if they can avoid similar problems in the future.
That involves cutting away the street surface just above the sewer main to relieve the pressure for the pipe bursting, then leveling off the ground and putting the road surface back down after the sewer line is replaced.
Meanwhile, residents in the area have complained in recent days about the smell of raw sewage coming from the work site.
Coffey said that's because, to replace the pipe, workers had to cut off the flow of sewage to that segment. That meant the raw sewage had to be diverted into an open manhole, then pumped through an above-ground bypass pipe east to the next segment of the sewer main.
Coffey said the city has asked the contractor to cover the open manhole to reduce the odor.
The pipe bursting process along Eighth Street between Connecticut and New York streets should be done by the end of next week, Coffey said.
From there, workers have three more blocks to go until they reach the railroad tracks east of Pennsylvania Street. The new line then will connect to an existing sewer main east of the tracks that flows directly into the wastewater treatment plant.
-- Peter Hancock's phone message number is 832-7144. His e-mail address is phancock@ljworld.com.
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