City officials are spending $100,000 to help make sure that a sinkhole at the edge of downtown doesn’t end up swallowing more pavement.

I-CON Underground LLC, of Lawrence, is working to shore up sewer and drainage pipes beneath Eighth and Kentucky streets, stretching north and east from the hole recently discovered at the intersection.

“They know they have problems at that sinkhole, so they want to prevent any other problems in that area,” said Mark Slack, president of I-CON Underground.

The company, which already is making preparations at the site, will use water, resin and sleeves of polyester felt to create “new” pipes within old ones. The “cured-in-place” linings will run inside old pipes as follows:

¢ 650 feet of 15-inch sanitary sewer pipe beneath Kentucky Street, between Eighth and Seventh streets; and 1,067 feet of such pipe beneath Eighth Street, from Kentucky to New Hampshire streets.

The $75,000 job will be conducted Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Slack said. The sewer system will remain functional throughout the work, and traffic flow is expected to remain normal on all affected streets but may be reduced to one-way in isolated circumstances.

“If we think it’s unsafe for our people, or we’ll have unsafe traffic conditions, we’ll move (the work) to at night,” Slack said.

¢ 450 feet of storm sewer pipes in the area. That $25,000 job will be handled March 6 and 7, Slack said.

City officials aren’t including the cost of the pipe lining project in the total for emergency repairs at the intersection because they had planned to have the work done later this year anyway.

Dave Wagner, an assistant utilities director, said officials decided to move the lining work up a few months because construction crews already were disrupting traffic in the area.